The Queer Mandalorian: My Poetry

We are aliens in this world gone cold

Depleted of life; Stuck in the void

Never to breathe the life; Never to feel the fire

A temporary promise for a fleeting desire

Just as the chasm remains

We stare into its blackness

We become the one six seven

And crawl unto the emptiness

Hope remains but is fleeting

Like ash in the wind

And like a lucid dream you set adrift

On Bikini Atoll where the Crossroads begin

Seventy years since you were forced to flee

It will never be the home that it used to be

The destruction of paradise for so-called peace

That's the world we live in; the bubble of Trinity

So as we leave this planet let's take a look

Through the foggy glass and the mired words

Of a human race that was so corrupt

Destroying this world for a piece of earth

MEANING:

I saw Godzilla this past weekend. I was floored! What a great movie! It brought back so many memories of watching those movies as a kid. When I was glued to the television every Saturday morning watching Godzilla, Ultraman, and even the occasional Battlestar Galactica rerun. Those were the days! Those shows (and especially Star Wars) set the stage for my very imaginative brain. I would say it is part because of Godzilla and part because of other movies and shows like The Manhattan Project (which interestingly was released about 2 months after the Chernobyl disaster), Jericho, Silkwood, and many more that gave me the fascination for nuclear bombs and disasters. I also watch the new CW TV show 100 which is about people coming back to earth to see if it's inhabitable again after a massive nuclear war that destroyed the planet. That also went into my brain for this poem I'm about to show you.

I remember my mom telling me about Bikini Atoll as a child. She grew up in all of this. She was about six years old when the first atomic bombs were detonated and nineteen when the last tests were done. I was almost twelve years old when disaster struck the Ukraine in the form of Chernobyl. I didn't understand it then as I do now, but it's something that has always stuck with me. Fascinated me. Scared the hell out of me. There's five nuclear power plants in my state, all about an hour or more away from me and God forbid something happens. That thought crosses my mind on occasion. Especially after the events at Fukushima, in Japan.

It's been almost seventy years since the Bikini Atoll residents were forcefully pushed from their homes. The government told them it was safe to return, but when they did cancer cropped up. They still can not go back there. Chernobyl is still uninhabitable, although there are a few people that still live in the outskirts of the city, though they have no power. And the brave souls that risked their lives to try and stop the Fukushima plant, did so for nothing. It is now uninhabitable. And God only knows what the rest of us will have to deal with since they lied about it leaking into the ocean. More cancer will crop up... everywhere! See... what these foolish nations have done by creating all of this super power, has not only destroyed the cities and islands that it inhabited, it has hurt the rest of our world. It's been almost thirty years since Chernobyl and yet if you walk in there without a special suit and touch anything metal or liquid, you WILL get sick, and possibly even die. It's THAT potent still. Bikini Atoll is truly still uninhabitable. Although the government says the radiation is going down, the people still fear and want the topsoil removed. After all, the government told them it was all clear before and they found that not to be true.

So while I was watching Godzilla I wrote a note in my little book I take with me, "Bikini Atoll", because they showed some of the testing and bombs in the opening credits. I wanted to do more research. I wanted to write something about it. I wanted to write a poem about it. But not just about it, about humanity. About humanity's need to be judge and executioner. And then it morphed into Christians judging other Christians. And I had all of this rolling around in my head. Anger. Frustration. Fear. I needed to get it out. And so I did. But not until I did some more research on the topic of nuclear bombs and tests and I incorporated all that knowledge into this poem. It's the best poem I've ever written. I added some names of the tests into the poetry, on Bikini Atoll as well as the Trinity test in New Mexico. A lot of innuendo in this one. I hope at the very least it'll give you the inspiration to research this stuff and fill your brain with some amazing facts... and a healthy fear of what our world is coming to.

I wanted to give you a quote from Albert Einstein that I've loved since I was a teenager. He realized the mistake he had made in creating the Atom Bomb. Hindsight 20/20 and all that. This was what he said:

"The release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking ... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker." - Albert Einsten

In depth information about the poem:

The "temporary promise for a fleeting desire" has to do with the promise that our government gave the Bikinians that they would be allowed to get back to their homes. The "one six seven" is the number of, 167 in total, Bikinians that were forced from their homes for the tests. "Crossroads" is a reference to the very first tests on Bikini Atoll. Operation Crossroads were two tests conducted in 1946. In case you're interested, Able and Baker were the two tests. The "bubble of Trinity" line has to do with the image of the Trinity test in New Mexico. Click this link to be taken to the image on Wikipedia. But it also has to do with the bubble we live under every day with the threat of nuclear war and disaster. Our next world war WILL be nuclear. Which funnily enough brings me to another quote I've just come across from Einstein: He says "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." Because the next war will be so powerful that it will end almost everything. And finally the "Destroying this world for a piece of earth" line stems from the fact that we are fighting over foolishness. Whether it's world wars or Christians debating each other. Our wars are petty, foolish, and selfish. It's ego-centric. It's pathetic and needs to stop. Hope you liked the poem and musings.