do world events (tsunami) compell you to write?

it was too huge for me to write about, until I heard this story on CNN... then, it was just 'there'...


a four year old boy survives for two days in a tree following the Indian Ocean tsunami

Two days in a tree–
This is not the world I knew.
I am four years old.

Where is the sea's smell?
Dead rats make a stink like that.
I am four years old.

I am four years old.
She always had time for me.
Tell her I'm not lost.

Two days in a tree–
I thought I heard birds crying,
But heard friends crying.

Tell her I'm not lost–
After two days in a tree,
Now, I'm in a bed.

I am four years old–
And I can only tell them
The name I answer to.

I am four years old–
Should I smile for the bright lights?
Do I have more tears?

Tell her I'm not lost
And surround me with cousins
While I'm in this bed.

It stinks, underneath.
Outside of the room, rats rot.
Where's the sea's smell?

Two days in a tree–
This is not the world I knew.
I am four years old.

It compells me to see what I can do to help through writing.

All week I've been putting the need for aid as the forefront of my newscasts.

I understand.

Americans are very good at ignoring international issues and disasters. Sometimes it takes an event that knocks the earth into a different rotation to make us turn our heads from Jerry Springer and look across the ocean.

Sounds like you were quite inspired by the personal story, too. Nice work!

For me the personal stories coming from this tragedy still bring me too much sorrow to inspire me to write. Perhaps as the days go by and we start to hear more of survival than death, something will capture my heart and goad my muse.

that i spent time with over Christmas. so, it did hit close to 'home'

Can't write a tsunami story now, for example.

I liked your poem a lot.

Banda Aceh, Indonesia -- Airborne military patrols scoured inaccessible sections of Sumatra island Thursday and discovered that swaths of land are inundated and that roads, villages and bridges have vanished. After helicopter flyovers, rescuers estimated more than 80,000 deaths in the region and described the scene as catastrophic.

"The scale of devastation is huge, bigger than imagined," said Emil Agustiono, a government official helping coordinate the Aceh relief effort.

a village in Aceh province

In a village in Aceh province,
There are no words,
There are no stories,
There is no one to speak them,
From this village of Aceh province.

In a village in Aceh province,
There is no one to remember,
The maps of homes and neighborhoods.
The gossip and myths and the names of neighbors--
Lost to a village in Aceh province.

In Aceh province,
A place that always was there
Is there no longer.
A contraction, a redacting,
Of elemental indifference.

A village once part of the province of Aceh,
Drowned in the greater din of death that day,
Must be mourned--nameless--by strangers.

December 31, 2004