whose pictures remain

8/4/2019 Whose Pictures Remain

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Bruce [email protected] poetslife.blogspot.com © retained

Whose Pictures Remain

Take in the baby pictures first.New spirit and new flesh shiningLike the sun and moon and starsAll at once saying: “Laugh with me! Love with me! Why can’t you see That this is so much fun!”

Take in the wedding pictures next.Remember that day and the days after,How everything was new and goodAnd somehow different and more lovingThan it had ever been before that day.Forget what has been said and done since.Look at that picture like you did that day:Fresh and young, fertile and vibrantWhen pledges of fidelity and eternal loveWere so easy to give and to keep.

Then look at the graduation shots.Great big photos that never look naturalBut in that unnatural light and setting say,“Ya made it kid! Despite the difficulties, Despite the money problems! Despite...Well...because of you f own and your family’s Secret and expressed belief that you would!” And how your face blesses that frameBecause it is you and your accomplishmentsStated before the whole family, and world.

Then go to the walls. All the walls.Look at the progression of the babyTo child to man and woman in states of lifeToo complicated for TV of Film to capture,Despite their having had a corner of their ownThe entire life of those pictures

Whose Pictures Remain

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Bruce Curley

And the life they record and reconcile.Consider how many millenniumsThis genetic dance has been done,At times a minuet, but most timesA mashed potato, and the generationsThose pictures both descend from and proceed,From Israel to Alpha CenturiaIn a genetic soup whose ingredientsThe scientists may analyze and computerizeBut whose broth will remain the final mystery.

And if you’ve still got the strength, Go to the inner sanctum -----Mom and Dad’s sanctified chamber. Who has the honored place on the dresser,And who was banished long ago to the far wall?How many generations gather togetherIn pictures here? Great grandparents shotsFaded and worn, still exist through the magicOf science and the wonder of love! Old unclesAnd older aunts, cousins and treasured othersFramed tenderly glass, wood and brass?

And there, that picture of all eight childrenTo which rosaries and benedictions to the saintsAre the primary reason that all eight still live,Despite the ravages of genetically cursed bloodAnd inherited disease, testament to the willAnd sacred grace that overpowers genetic destinyBy the raw but real power of family and bloodTies that somehow overcome the blood curse:That now means 21 grandchildren know love.

And travel to a bedroom in the future,One the genetic scientist and doctorsEven now want you to see as the only way.They point to pictures of beautiful, healthy children,So perfect and trouble free and good...But there are only blank spaces on these walls.

Whose Pictures RemainBruce Curley



Page 2

Where the picture of a poet could have been,There is only one more computer engineer.

Where the picture of a building contractor wasThere is only one more electrical engineer.Where the picture of a truck driver once hungThere is only one more genetic scientist.Where the picture of a car mechanic did hang,There is only one more justification lawyer.

“See how science has triumphed at last Over superstition, ignorance, and pain!?” They ask, and such sadness spikes the soul!Ask them to turn now to their wallet or purse,

To the pictures to be found preserved therein.Who would you sacrifice like scientific Abraham’s On the altar of a more perfect, predictable race?The Nazi doctors did this and were called butchers,Our genetically conceived, genetically dependentGene splicing scientists do it and receive accolades.

Look at these pictures anew:And again at your wallet and purse.Consider the blank spaces leftWhen picture frames are removed from walls.Now look at the walls of this fragile human familyAnd consider: In this genetically engineered future,Whose genes are now to be blessedWhose genes are now to be cursed,Whose to future and whose to the trash can,And the current and past consequencesOf power man and arrogant men,And how the Albert Schweitzer’s of the gene cult May one day turn out to be insteadThe Joseph Mengeles’s of the Apocalypse laboratory.

If we are at the top of the food chain:Who would we eat our own young?

whose pictures remain

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