Crossed Roads by Suzanne Paschall
Embleton Bay at Sunrise, Low Tide, with Dunstanburgh Castle in Distance, Northumberland, England - Photographic Print
Frost, Lee
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Along the border between England and Scotland
Lies the ruins of the Reivers
I go there, lie askew, my hands caressing heathery moor,
My toes digging into the soil of a virgin queen.
I am at the crossroads of truth and fiction.
When I was a girl I memorized the names
of gods and goddesses
Greek and Roman, though today I can
confuse them, their identities trampled by the knowledge
that nothing, nobody, is perfect.
This does not rule out the possibility of
magic, though. Imagination is more important
than knowledge, Einstein said.
That resonates deep in me, it validates
much of me.
The news shows pictures, live, colourful, of
bodies in Kosovo, Serbs murdering Albanians.
Corpses lined up in the mosque
like matchsticks,
three women, one child.
But I am Switzerland
In my blackened living room
the blue light of the tube
flickering against the smooth, unaffected
skin of my cheeks.
No, it is fiction that terrifies me,
poetry that makes me rigid.
Myths that sway me to moral positions,
my conscience considers them in a way it refuses the
real world.
The reel world
the choreographed
criminals and victims
of the eyeful, witless
news.
BIO: Suzanne has been a journalist in Kansas, advertising writer in New York, short fiction and magazine writer in Canada, and a songwriter. Her music has been performed and recorded by other artists, in film and television and on stage. These are her first published poems.
www.paschallarts.com
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/paschallampdahl
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R3670y4lw0
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