Los fusilamientos del 3 de mayo

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Los fusilamientos del 3 de mayo

• a sequence of poems

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• At the Death Goya's "The Shootings of May Third
  1808"So they'll die, in living colorscythed
  down by the French fusilladeof musketballs shot
  by shakoed privatesfar from home before a green
  Spanish hillBut not before a final
  demonstration as one man stands defiant, arms
  raised, hismouth stretched in final speech, a
  last beseechby this actor in bright white
  shirtmomentarily caught by the painter's
  eye,his focal shirt blindingly white,though we
  the viewers know it soonwill bleed carmine like
  the ground,dun, shit-colored, sullied when he
  subsides.

• Christopher T George

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• Bloody Street
• I believe
• so do they
• Kill me
• but you will not win
• with your guns
• because you are paid
• to be murderers
• by a machine of evil
• we believe
• that which is just and good
• Kill me
• lay me in the blood
• already below me
• others are witnesses
• you will
• never win
• that man over there

• Carol Sircoulomb

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• may third 1880shootings  
• i feel my arms raised
• why. why?
• it is if i am standing just
• beyond my own reach
• it is all sound and no sound
• i can see my eyes reflected
• in the drop of sweat that runs
• down my killer's cheek
• my eyes but yet not
• for i am already gone
• just beyond my reach.

• Sherry Pasquarello

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• GOYA BURLESQUEOf course it isn't funny,that's
  the pointbut neverthelessthe guy being shot
  could bea blacked up minstrel,Al Jolson being
  shot for a finalrendition of "Mammy"as he waves
  his hands in the airtho' that was not what they
  shotpeople for in Spain in 1808The blood gives
  it away,how recent it looks, so red stillso
  gaudy you can mistakethe well lighted scenefor
  theatre lightswhere poor auditionersare sent
  away deadand the tablelaux ofsoldiers stop for
  a smoke.

• James Bell

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calaya

• Elementary Slam-amanic Journey 
• War neither "art," nor "thou art,
• but yet another chance to wake up, especially me,
• to to be or not to be is not the question.
• How fast I feel I must go when Im afraid. 
• Ghastly, to feel so near out of time.
• Personally, I must spell myself out
• of the shoot, out of the gallery and shout,
• "Im having trouble breathing through  
• the horrors of what we do to each other.
• "Not so fun, either, what I do to myself.
• Nor the sorrows I feel over us.
• Makes me want to stop singing, 
• "Whether or not at war,
• whether or not in love,

• round after round hoping for another round
• doing little except hoping for another round.
• Ghastly, feeling so out of rhyme.
• I must take some time to shout, 
• "I feel bound to you, going
• round and around Earth
• in the tail of the Milky Way,
• sometimes hated, sometimes loved. 
• Not always fun, blowing in the wind.
• But here I am, beautiful and terrible.
• I may seem to be or not to be.
• And when I sail on my breath  
• I see what feels like us,
• waters and airs
• swathed in diverse skins
• at war, and I am unmasked.

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• unmoving 
• a painting is visual
• and unmoving
• in this one
• is a figure dressed in the white light
• of innocence
• his pose
• invites bullets to
• pierce him as the
• nails pieced Christ
• demanding
• the stigmata
• to prove his martyrs death
• but here
• in the final captured moments
• of his life
• we are forced to stand
• beside the firing squad

• Jim Bennett

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• Goya poster May 3, 2008
• the intensity of la coche-bomba grows,
• los rebeldes grow ever bolder
• as if their version of freedom will prevail
• six years after victoria first declared
• no painter captures the atrocities
• of this never-ending war,
• no photographer there when insurgents
• lined against a ox-marked wall
• two-hundred years after Goya
• expressed his displeasure of war
• against the harmless and débil,
• the victims remain as inocente
• six years or two-hundred
• nada changes except technology

• Gary Blankenship

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• jazz

• I tried to tell you
• that I'd walked into someone else's dream
• that I'd tried to run
• escape from the blood shed
• you never listened 
• you lifted your gun
• with the rest
• turned the streets
• into stenching rivers
• that ran red
• carrying the dead
• into another dream  
• I tried to tell you
• that my shirt was too white
• to be spoiled by the blood of innocence
• I pleaded with you
• to let me continue my sleep

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• The Third of May 1808
•  
• Pity the soldier in a foreign land.
• Armed with anonymity, hes become
• the uniform he wears, the arms he carries.
• Between him and his loved ones -
• now hes given up his face and name -
• is only atrocity. Atrocity made easy
• by the uniform and the comradeship
• of the firing squad. When youre nothing
• but your countrys political will
• it never does to show a human face,
• to love a little the folk
• whose kids youre bayoneting.

• Stuart Nunn

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• FIRING SQUAD  
• We must make an example of you.
• Too many library books go overdue.
• Face the wall and wear your glasses
• We must educate the masses.
• The message reads loud and clear.
• We don't trust those who take the books away from
  here
• When others are waiting to borrow.
• Yours were due back yesterday. Not today or
  tomorrow.
• We're using silencers so we don't make a din.
• Please don't scream,  there's people  reading
• About the value of not being late
• So they don't meet your sorry fate.
• They'll bring their books back on time,
• Knowing we cannot tolerate such a crime.
• You took a book upon the law
• You kept that book despite what you saw
• On page two-hundred and twenty two.

• Arthur Chappell

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