NUCLEAR TEST (ALASKA, Spring 2005)

A poem written on a ship sailing the Pacific shortly after the Thailand tsunami of 2004, which has become relevant in view of the events in Japan.

It was a greek boy

on a ship

towards Alaska

who told me about

the nuclear tests

that brought on the disaster

Tsunamis was a word

to mask their greed for power

the need to test their strength

the Great Empire

It was a greek boy

through loud music

at a party

and tears came 
to my eyes

as I recalled
the babies

caught by the great wave

the torrent mud
closing in
on summerland

he said
"don´t you know
the Americans caused
the tsunami?" 

like I was the last person
in the world
to know
the self-evident truth
a simple fact

As if my mind could grasp

the thought

that Natural Disaster
was a Mirage
set in the desert
to deceive us all
and truth was
painful
more than I could hold

Remembering the news
the fathers looking
for babies they had lost
and desperate hope

The people running
down the streets 
and helplessly

People washed away
in swirls of mud
and roofs and trees
and parasols

They killed a hundred thousand
with a bomb
and they called it
tsunami

Just a contingency
casualties of 
a warm war

like in Irak
they dropped the bombs
and then the food
from airplanes


They´ll run a big fundraiser
and a concert
and hours of silence
for the victims

And somewhere
underwater
lies the proof

and nobody
will dig it out 
for long

that there was
no such thing
as a tsunami
that meteorologists
could not predict

and the nuclear attack
will be unheard of
in history

the greatest show on Earth
in the news everyday
on CNN



A sense of anticlimax
finding out now
that everyone´s forgotten
the pain, the loss, the mud

A Nuclear test
in the Pacific

contingencies

casualties of no war

Reviews

[Desert Dreamer]

Nuclear tests, weapons, power plants, we should get rid of all of these things, they cause great destruction in the world...this is a horrible thing you describe. It is common in history for the US to cause disasters so they can go in later to "help", althought these stories aren't told in school history books. Very well written, thank you for sharing.