Our Humanity – Three Poems by Genny Lim
By Genny Lim. Posted August 30, 2018.
We live in an age defined by wars and mass migration. The greatest violence committed against humanity was the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing over 80,000 people instantly. It has been 73 years since the tragedy and sadly, the world has not succeeded in banning nuclear arms and if anything, has heightened the threat of war and annihilation with Trump’s threats against North Korea and Iran. Now he’s requesting a budget of $716 billion for national defense. We pay for these wars with our tax dollars at the expense of human services, education, healthcare, housing, etc. But the real cost is our humanity. It is always innocent civilians, the women and children, the mothers tasked with feeding and sheltering their children in the crosshairs of flying bullets and missiles, running through the rubble, ruins and ashes of their former lives, who have no say. – Genny Lim
Pika Don
Where did the people go?
A flash of white light
beneath dark clouds
A thunderous, deafening
roar exploding the sky
Where did time go?
The shamisen stops
Doesn’t know the difference
between the song and the singer
The dreamer stops dreaming
Doesn’t know the difference
between sleep or death
One breath is all it takes
for time to disappear
Like the butterfly
unattached to its pupa
Like the glide of fingers
over shamisen strings
Like cry of a shakuhachi
mourning spring
We are born to die
Search for a familiar face
A tiny spark of life among
deserted streets of upturned
carts and smoldering flesh
War and peace are a chess game
Impossible to know the exact
moment when milk turns to curd or
when a caterpillar becomes butterfly
Life and death are of one cloth
One moment is all it takes for
an empire that exults in
the glory of conquest
to be destroyed
A flash of blinding white light
at 8:15 in the morning
Black Rain falling in
a shroud of darkness
Pika don
Children of the Mushroom
Hibakusha
Orphans of the bomb
Forbidden to forget
Doomed to remember
Never again
One breath is all it takes
for a pupa to burst free
by Genny Lim
Aug. 6, 1945
First Atomic Bomb dropped on Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m. killing 80,000 people instantly
Aug. 9, 1945.
Fat Man dropped at 4 a.m. killing 40,000 people instantly.
pika – flash (of light)
don- bomb, thunder
Senshin Buddhist Temple, Los Angele, CA 2018
