Channon. Chris.Thinking of this
Must open the window
I feel the retching asphyxia of one who knows
they were told a lie.
Here, at the very end of the earth-
It is still safe in one’s car…
to cry.
“Don’t look” says the boy. “close your eyes!”
(in this part of the loop)
she also cries.
Sobs, pleading, and finally , the bargaining.
There will be no compromise.
Another “sleep”
Another “round”
(” I will get through this. I want to live. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” ” I will come out of this alive”)
For she is young, and these comfort her.
No punishment is forgotten.
When they tire of her flesh,
The last hours they try to steal her will, her spirit, her dignity
They succeed.
Now she is praying.
Some verse I have heard before.
“Please, let this end”..
She thanks her parents,
asks God to take care of them,
Christopher’s face.
A winter rope swing ..
off a precipice
Unties.
She flies. (“i’m free, I can breathe!”)
The endless horizon , summerland sky.
The black, fixed in the camera
in the blue of her eyes.
The Spoils of War 
Nice one,
Greetings from the Netherlands.
Oi.
Oi to you! is this Marten from SF? It has to be, I don’t know anyone who else who says “Oi”
Your post today (feb3) showed up in the alert I keep for any news or blog posts about the Channon Christian/Chris Newsome murders, and then I started reading some of your archives about the murders and found this poem. We lived in Knoxville at the time of the murders, my oldest son was a student at UT, living in the dorms–I can’t even begin to tell anyone how this crime affected me. It absolutely haunts me, still, although it was so much more ever-present in the first few months after. At times I felt I was there, living it with them, I could see it so vividly, nightmarish, before the details even came out. Hard to talk about, I sound like a—anyway, we moved away that summer, we have no ties to Knoxville any longer, but I keep the alert because I want to know what happens. I want to know that the young people are remembered by others not family or friend, I want to know what happens during the trials, to know that what SHOULD happen DOES happen. It seems hopeless, though, I can not believe it has been two years.
Long-winded way to say–your poem touched me, made me sad, made me cry. I see by it, by your phrasing, that you, too, maybe have felt present at that horrible place. And I appreciate you writing about this, keeping it out there.
Thank you, Lori, your reply is appreciated as well. There are more people than one would think whom, upon finding out about this through the Internet, rallies, articles- were also sickened, despairing and/or enraged and were also quite angry these kinds of events are not as isolated or rare as one would think, and are most definitely hushed up by the mainstream media machine, as simply showing the victims and killers would certainly shock and anger many.
I echo your sentiment “what should happen, does happen.” I somewhat addressed that in other posts and touched upon it again on the main page,aadding to it at length tonight (click blog title), and will continue to do so as the trials progress.
There are things that can only BEGIN to be dealt with the way they should be- a gateway there, as it were. Any other way would seem too natural, inappropriate and easy, given the gravity and viciousness of the crimes. Many take what we are saying for vengeance, but that word suggests the debt is settled, which is wrong. Crimes against the good, and undeserving- and this would count the grief-stricken parents- I see this crime as not only being against Channon and Chris , but their families and friends-when you look at it in the bigger light- it is a crime against society- especially merit swift and effective measures.
One can only atone with their own blood if one has the capacity for it , and crimes of this nature move beyond that. A tiger or rhino is not dangerous or a threat in its own proper element, doing what it naturally does, but put it in civilization- well, inevitably it will have to be put down- destroyed.
Is the tiger going to experience remorse or want to atone? Will it change its ways, its nature? No. Can we give it therapy and programs and believe it will? That’s insanity. You either keep the tiger in a cage, destroy it, or send it back to its own habitat. In any case, you don’t want it roaming the streets, having access to your children, because it ONLY looks at them as prey, and nothing will change that.
Come back when you can, be as long-winded as you like- and don’t worry about sounding weird because you felt like you could ‘see’ it- the title of the poem is after all, ‘7th Sense’.
because of the subjects I write about the Greek word ‘zophos’ comes to mind, a ‘dark place, nether world’ , from which the word Zephyr (the west wind) is derived.
kind regards,
SC
I got an anonymous email asking me about this, about stuff I wrote in the poem-I thought I would answer here – I originally wrote this early in 07- the part in the poem about bargaining – that was not meant in the sense that the defense probably told defendant #2 to use as part of his story. When I wrote that about bargaining- I am talking about when things get very bad- I was thinking about the deals one makes with GOD in one’s own head, or in prayer-“If I get out of here, I promise to.. I will do this with my life, I will always/never….I will be a better person/daughter/mother” – it has no suggestion or anything close to the pathetic short-bus lies Diablo Negro made up. I hope after I have been writing about this case off and on for two years plus, you will believe me.
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you can google search the title if you want, of course some of the fake ghetto blogs- I blew it, I’m on some of them leaving my own comments- they already have my info, but I told them I know they are fake. I took the bait when they first started years ago- now you see on the Knoxville newspaper sites fake shocked people who post links trying to get you to go. It’s a scam, I just don’t know exactly for what.
Those kind of sites will give results for the title of my poem as some sites use hidden word tags to boost their hit results-they will use anything- often times to draw more visitors or take visitors away from the real site- often times whether or not the keywords or tags are related to the site or not- you might see word tags for viagra, cialis or britney spears for a site about knitting. Ok, maybe not about knitting, but if you do an advanced google search- see bottom of this post, you will find those spamwords on sites in search results, even if you don’t see them on the site or page. If you do that with spamming keywords- spamdexing- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spamdexing… the big search engines will..I actually don’t know what they do- but they don’t like it.
Why do the ghetto blogs do that, with the fake keywords, fake shocked “OMG, go check out this horrible site” posts trying to get people to visit? Maybe it is some kind of money-making click scam, or cookie-stuffing- “This involves placing an affiliate tracking cookie on a website visitor’s computer without their knowledge, which will then generate revenue for the person doing the cookie stuffing. This not only generates fraudulent affiliate sales, but also has the potential to overwrite other affiliates’ cookies, essentially stealing their legitimately earned commissions.” or mirror sites : “Hosting of multiple websites all with conceptually similar content but using different URLs. Some search engines give a higher rank to results where the keyword searched for appears in the URL.” In any case, check out the wiki page on spamdexing.
If you see this crap as a search result go here to report: http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html
If you aren’t trying to do the equivalent of getting in the SEO ranks without earning it- you know- it’s kind of like the things we WN talk about with affirmative action and programs. With the ghetto blogs- all I know is that I am pretty sure it is fake and the ‘content’ is not the real purpose of the blog. It’s not real, so don’t bother going there to even report it. They haven’t been pulled, they have only multiplied. So White people, don’t do this, because it’s downright, well ******ish.
aside- a nerdy diatribe that might help you on web searches-
for example if one goes to google and wants to search for a certain word/phrase/screen name/topic/number/whatever one can use this formula in google for searching- it is really useful and will often yield better results than searching any site itself- as google caches and sites can delete. Also, if you use the google cache as a place to look, you don’t need to actually visit the site- that is as long as you use the cache link and don’t go to the current page- you could do that for this site if you wanted. I always looked at the web paranoia thing the way I mentioned before a) you aren’t doing anything illegal, stupid, threatening b) if you trust who may or may not have your info- you are probably OK.
I’m the only one running this site/blog/any of it, I don’t have minions, invisible or otherwise. Besides the fact I would feel like crap asking people to do stuff for me I don’t even want to do and not paying them, I can’t stand asking someone and then they take forever or just never do it- so- if I want to do anything I don’t know how to do here or otherwise, I go learn it myself. Yeah some of this whole website stuff is dry, but it’s not rocket science and like I said, If I can’t pay people, I can’t very well rag on them for not doing it right/quickly enough for my fascist dictator taste or get pissed in silence. That whole deal is reminiscent of what I call the law of reciprocation. Anyway, here* is how you do it:
word(s) one is searching for site: .com
if that isn’t self-explanatory enough, here’s an example of what to put in google:
sue site:suesknittingclub.com
You can also add words or phrases as long as it is before you put site:www.whateverwebsite.com
If you would like to minus out a result put your search word(s) in, then put a – as in
sue -cross-stitch site:blahblah.com I don’t think it matters whether you put the www or not.
* I am sure there are other ways to do this, or software that does it, this is just the way I learned that has the benefit of the google caching system. Other search software simply looks for links or the word search, but one still must go to the page, thus creating a trail or the page may be gone anyway. Also see here if you want to really get into search help. Yeah it isn’t shiny and fluffy, there’s no cool videos or chicks, but if you take the time to look over it and get the concepts, it will save you time later when you are trying to find something
http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=136861
http://lifehacker.com/339474/top-10-obscure-google-search-tricks
http://airweb.cse.lehigh.edu/2009/proceedings.html
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I agree this was a henous crime and all the individuals should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. However, with that being said too many of White American seems too over joyous about seeing African American being given the death penalty. Most white people are hypocritical in this fact because if society held you to the same standard half of your relatives would have been put to sleep for the sick crimes that were commited against the African American people. I dare you to just read one book that deals with slavery and if you do get ready to throw up when you read how most slave owerners raped their slaves, cut babys from them, sold the babies before they were even weanned from their mom, beat to the point of death their slaves, made them work in scortching temperatures from sun up to sun down 6 days out of a week, killed by “lenching” their slaves and never have been prosecuted. Or lets talk about the thousands and thousands of African American who were hung in trees for no reason at all from the 1900’s to 1960’s and sometimes to this day. Lets talk about the 4 little school girls who died in a bomb blast and who never received justice, lets talk about Emmit Teal who was savagely beaten and finally received a sliver of justice a couple of years ago. Lets talk about some of these things. Dont get me wrong, i do not excuse these individuals for what they did, whoever, i am not going celebrate their death sentence and I am not going act as if African Americans are the only one who commit these crimes. Because these types of crimes have been being perpretrated agains African Americans for the last 400 years.