Births, Bombs, and Body Snatchers

Births, Bombs, and Body Snatchers

A ripe Enola Gay gave birth to

Paul Tibbets on February 23 1915 in Quincy, Illinois.

A ripe Enola Gay gave birth to

Little Boy on August 5 1945 in Hiroshima, Japan.

Paul Tibbets and Little Boy

visited Japan together in 1945.

 

Every 40 seconds a person commits suicide.

Little Boy took 43 seconds to drop on 150,000 people,

20,000 of them soldiers. Double that is 40,000,

plus 20,000 more

is the total number of direct fatalities-

80,000.

 

70,000 more people were injured by the blast and fallout.

 

Major General Leslie R. Groves designed

a bomb that hurt over 150k people, then became

Vice President at an electronics firm to make gyroscopes. He

received the Sylvanus Thayer Award for the mass

murder of two Japanese towns and the proceeded to

die of a heart attack at the age of 73. We remember him

today in the ghastly fumes and rubble of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

 and, of course, in his memorial park along the Colombia River.

Most  of the time though, we don’t remember him at all.

 

Two years after Little Boy swallowed Hiroshima, Edward T. Gein,

a handyman, murdered 15 women in the span of 5 years. He was

incarcerated and died in an asylum. We remember him

as an infamous household a name: Ed Gein. We remember him

in the fictional souls of famous monsters:

Norman Bates, Leatherface, Hannibal Lecter, Buffalo Bill.

We remember tanned leather capes of woman-skin, grave robbing and evil.

We remember evil. But

who is Leslie R. Groves

 

 again?

 

k.l.j

4/27/14

Author's Note

Criticism and feedback very much appreciated! :)

Reviews

[abluehorseandflowers]

Ode: a lyric poem typically of elaborate or irregular metrical form and expressive of exalted or enthusiastic emotion. (dictionary,reference.com) I understand and laud your intent, and I suggest this reads more as a short essay.
Elegy: from greek, "lament" The elements of a traditional elegy mirror three stages of loss (poets.org)
I mean this question earnestly: What loss (grief) have these events caused you? That could make a lovely poem.