From cave pictures, with hand
sprayed self portraits.
To a church’s pulpit displaying
Psalm Twenty Three.
The writing’s on the wall

From mud huts to stately
homes.
The writing’s on the wall

From the nail driven torso
hanging from the eaves.
To bullet chipped, blood
soaked wall of the firing squad
The writing’s on The Wall

From the cleaved head. That
reminisces Salome’s deed.
To a child’s barrel-bombed and
desecrated body. Too
late to share its uncorrupted
mind.
The writing’s on The Wall

And from the push of the first
button to the
push of the final button.
There will be NO writing on
the wall

Is that the writing we want
for us?
The world is at war. Humanity
is in flames.
And I have tears. But, nowhere
to cry.

~* ~

Commentary by Leila Samarrai: This amazing, well-crafted poem doesn’t contain the usual rhetoric related to terrorism such as descriptions of bloody shouts, strong shocks, gas masks, or bombs. The voice of this fantastic poet, Terry Robinson, shows through seemingly unrelated metaphor on the effects of terrorism throughout time. I see this history through images ranging from the head of John the Baptist, the pierced body of ‘homo erectus’, to the poor infant in the ancient days of Sumerian Civilization in Mesopotamia. I see shattered heads; I escape Salome’s wrath; and I walk through the epochs, through history. These words and images are united in their marrow, and all this is accompanied by the mantra, “The writing’s on The Wall”, that will echo in my ears, maybe forever. This phrase emphasizes his point that mankind has a propensity for violence or terrorism and this nature is the ‘writing on the wall’, or something that cannot be changed. A good poet often transcends genre or topic, and here, images and words fly through the ages, transcending time until the dystopian end when the poet turns to his own humanity, as well as to the remains of the world, surrounded by ruins, in the manner of a post-apocalyptic hero when he writes: ‘/ The world is at war. Humanity is in flames. / And I have tears. But, nowhere to cry /’. The poet conveys a universal message that the world is changing, but the scenery remains the same. The room for interpretation is not immense, but it is ambiguous, seemingly without hope or even a small opening through which one can cry and breathe. A circle has neither a beginning nor an end: it is one single, continuous line, a never-ending cycle without progress, where the past is endlessly repeated.. ‘until he comes out at the beginning’ (Fishman). Or, should I quote Jim Morrison, ‘This is the end, My only friend’.

Frosini, Fabrizio. POETRY AGAINST TERROR (Kindle Locations 2280-2284). Fabrizio Frosini.