Whose Pictures Remain
Poetic Reflections on how we use DNA and RNA Knowledge
Poetry is essential to civilization. It conveys deep truths that are transmitted to present and future generations. Therefore, it is essential to civil defense. Poetry can inculcate values, wisdom, belief, holiness, beauty, and sacred truths mere knowledge, instructions, policy, plans and procedures can only imitate.
Poetry can help you survive combat and live to a ripe old age despite the hidden mental and visible physical wounds. See the book As You Were: A Portable Library of American Prose and Poetry Assembled for Members of the Armed Forces and the Merchant Marine, edited by Alexander Woollcott, New York: The Viking Press, 1943 for how this works.
As You Were is loaded with American Fiction and American Verse, along with American Fact, like the Declaration of Independence and a Letter from Franklin to Washington. Why? Because the great men who lived American civilization daily then during World War Two knew the value of poetry to strengthen men to deal with the horrors of combat.
Like them, our daily combat to continue American civilization continues.
Here is a poem I wrote over 25 years ago. I wrote it when my mother was still alive after looking at the photos she kept around her for years…for a reason. Given the insanity of the plandemic, this poem makes more sense now than it did to me then.
These poems arrive by way of the Holy Spirit. It is a mystery to me how, but in obedience, I try to write them down when they arrive. Otherwise, they are gone forever. It is a duty I have had since I was first taught how to write and about Divine Inspiration by the St. Joseph nuns.
Enjoy.
Whose Pictures Remain
Take in the baby pictures first.
New spirit and new flesh shining
Like the sun and moon and stars
All 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 good
And somehow different and more loving
Than 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 vibrant
When pledges of fidelity and eternal love
Were so easy to give and to keep.
Then look at the graduation shots.
Great big photos that never look natural
But in that unnatural light and setting say,
“Ya made it kid! Despite the difficulties,
Despite the money problems! Despite...
Well...because of your own and your family’s
Secret and expressed belief that you would!”
And how your face blesses that frame
Because it is you and your accomplishments
Stated before the whole family, and world.
Then go to the walls. All the walls.
Look at the progression of the baby
To child to man and woman in states of life
Too complicated for TV of film to capture,
Despite their having had a corner of their own
The entire life of those pictures
And the life they record and reconcile.
Consider how many millenniums
This genetic dance has been done,
At times a minuet, but most times
A mashed potato, and the generations
Those pictures both descend from and proceed,
From Israel to Alpha Centuria
In a genetic soup whose ingredients
The scientists may analyze and computerize
But 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 together
In pictures here? Great grandparents shots
Faded and worn, still exist through the magic
Of science and the wonder of love! Old uncles
And older aunts, cousins and treasured others
Framed tenderly in glass, wood and brass frames?
And there, that picture of all eight children
To which rosaries and benedictions to the saints
Are the primary reason that all eight still live,
Despite the ravages of genetically cursed blood
And inherited disease, testament to the will
And sacred grace that overpowers genetic destiny
By the raw but real power of God, family and blood.
Ties 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 doctors
Even 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.
Where the picture of a poet could have been,
There is only one more computer engineer.
Where the picture of a building contractor was
There is only one more electrical engineer.
Where the picture of a truck driver once hung
There 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 my soul!
I 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 obsessed, genetically dependent
Gene splicing scientists do it and receive accolades.
Look at these pictures anew:
And again at your wallet and purse.
Consider the blank spaces left
When picture frames are removed from walls.
Now look at the walls of this fragile human family
And consider: In this genetically engineered future,
Whose genes are now to be blessed,
Whose genes are now to be cursed,
Whose to future and whose to the trash can,
And the current and past consequences
Of power mad and arrogant men,
And how the Albert Schweitzer’s of the gene cult
May one day turn out to be instead
The Joseph Mengeles’s of the Apocalypse laboratory.
If we are at the top of the food chain:
Why do we eat our own young?