Equally Dead

On the first anniversary of you-know-when they held a ceremony. The names of the dead were carefully read out, as if each name was a special and delicate seedling, each reader seeming to imply: “That particular office worker, burning, instead of him it could've been me.” It took them two and a half hours to read the names so I decided I wanted to perform a poem reading out the names of everyone killed since 1998 in the Congo War. The only thing that stopped me was the cruel cost of all the lager and twiglets needed to sustain the audience for 4 months and 3 weeks. War is an insinuating therapist challenging our belief that everyone is equally special and delicate. The challenge is to be able to say: “That particular child-soldier, machine-gunned, instead of him it could've been me.” Even though it plainly couldn't.  © Will Holloway 2007 http://www.willholloway.com/