Kettled
The police in the Ian Tomlinson case said "sorry" today, which took them a while...
Kettled
It’s in the reductive image that a dead man dies
Again and again; and in the repetition lies
His ghost, a sad, silent accuser demoted
To an extra in his own story. His name’s a word
For headline writers to play with, his
Violent end a fact for lawyers to wrangle.
His apparition moves through it all, its exits thwarted,
Like he moved through the streets that day -
You see him, lost and restless, in the blue-grey
Flicker of CCTV, re-broken into bulletin-shards
His final minutes projected onto partial truth,
His fading form remade into something more, but
Somehow less, than real. When he looks up
To the camera, cordoned off from another way out,
He is shrunk to a feeling that we feel. His city
Is not his city now, and the state, turned
Feral, is indifferent until his needs make him
An irritant to be clubbed down and lied
About and watched, over and over,
In courtrooms newsrooms chatrooms living rooms,
A man who can’t, who won’t, get home.
Chris Co
Wed 7th Aug 2013 15:35
Hi Miles,
The lines below are the heart of the poem for me. They contain a truism - very well thought!
His ghost, a sad, silent accuser demoted
To an extra in his own story. His name’s a word
For headline writers to play with, his
Violent end a fact for lawyers to wrangle.
..........
Flicker of CCTV, re-broken into bulletin-shards
His final minutes projected onto partial truth,
Excellent image, though subjectively I would have prefered;
" projected a partial truth"
......
An irritant to be clubbed down and lied
About and watched, over and over,
In courtrooms newsrooms chatrooms living rooms,
A man who can’t, who won’t, get home.
The final line captures the essance of all that goes before and emhpasies the cognitive dissonance that we all feel when re-watching (rightly or wrongly) this trauma.
Of course there can be no other ending, and over, and over is how it has played out in all replay. But the tense of "can't", even won't suggests the present tense, suggests that it is in the now as we watch him try to get home. Of course the reality is he "didn't" as in past tense. Had you used the past tense you would not have achieved this terrible groundhog day like effect - so the word selection was very much correct. It also helps to achieve this sense that this man became an extra in his own story - it reinforces the sadness of his fate.
A poem that touches the human aspect, rather than replaying the replays it in one sense rightly critisizes.
One thing I would add given the last point. I personally would change the title and honour the man with his name. The poem is not generic - like the man, despite the media.
Very emotive and very well written.
P.S
Please excuse any typis - virtual keyboard has its issues.
Best of
Chris