Joseph4GI: poetry corner

Muncie Circumcision Case: HIGHWAY ROBBERY

REPOST: Of Ecstasy and Rape, Surgery and Mutilation

Sunday, May 5, 2019

Poetry Corner - What Say Ye? Oh Doctor?

This is the seventh in a series of poems and song parodies that I wrote for a contest that centered around male infant circumcision. The contest encouraged original songs and poems, as well as parodies of other works. For my last Poetry Corner entry, I posted a parody based on poetry written by late American circumcision mogul Edgar Schoen.

This time around, I'm posting an original poem I wrote, expressing my disdain for the American medical profession.

At the time, I was still single, but I knew one day I'd be married and have children of my own. I knew that at least one of my children would be male, and that I'd have to deal with knife-happy doctors wanting to mutilate my son. (Or sons?) I wanted to prepare myself for the hypothetical encounter where some doctor or nurse came to us trying to peddle circumcision.

Having been an intactivist for some time already, there was already so much disdain I had for doctors who did this; for doctors who were in the business of hocking this needless surgery on parents of boys.

Of course, I wasn't even sure I was going to be a father, but there was so much I wanted to say to any doctor with the balls to approach me and ask me if I would let him take my son away and mutilate his penis. There was so much anger. There IS still anger. I can't believe this is happening in my country TODAY.

"I may never have children, let alone a son," I thought to myself, but I wanted an opportunity to tell a doctor off, even if an imagined, hypothetical one. So when I wrote this poem, I poured every last thought I could into it; all the things I'd like to tell a doctor to his face if he or she dared TRY to ask me.

A doctor asking me to let me circumcise my son might as well ask me if I could let him rape my daughter.

The NERVE of nurses and doctors.

So this poem depicts what I would have liked to say in the hypothetical situation where a doctor or nurse approached me and my wife to asks us to let him mutilate my son.

What Say Ye? Oh Doctor?

What say ye? Oh Doctor?
Why must this child be shorn
of normal, healthy tissue
with which every boy is born?

What say ye? Oh Doctor?
Is he dying? Is he sick?
Is that a cancerous tumor
growing on his little dick?

And what say ye? Oh Doctor?
What prompts this "big decision?"
What ails this child today
that commands his circumcision?

Just what disease in newborns
is circumcision s'pposed to cure?
Why must healthy newborn boys
such needless pain endure?

More than urging parents
that they sign away permission,
Don't you need an actual reason
for performing circumcision?

Just what other healthy body parts
do you remove at parents' whims?
If parents came and asked you
would you cut off healthy limbs?

Since when does circumcising
healthy boys become your task?
Can you even be performing them?
Let alone their parents ask?

If there's no rhyme or reason,
Just how is it that you dare?
Come into my wife's room
and ask for what's not there?

Is it the child's well being,
or is it your thirst for blood?
Or is it for the money
why you say that this is good?

Are you actually worried
That this boy won't look like dad?
Or is it that you envy
the foreskin you never had?

Is it that you thirst and hunger
to inflict the pain
The same torture that you suffered,
on newborn babes again?

Just how is it called medicine
to mutilate the healthy?
To put newborns at needless risk
of death while you get wealthy?

How exactly is it, Doctor,
that you even have the gall?
To pawn these lies on parents
from door to door and hall to hall?

How is it legal for you to perform
this needless surgery,
let alone consult the parents
of the circumcised to be?

Profiting from needless surgery.
Is that not against the law?
In non-consenting individuals,
Is that not medical fraud?

In the end, what is it, Doctor?
What have you left to say?
What keeps this child from coming home
intact and whole today?

SHAME on you, Oh Doctor.
How could you sink so low.
Why the onus on the parents,
when it's YOU who's paid to know?

Shame on all these "studies,"
that seek to justify,
the blatant violation
of basic human rights.

Get thee OUT of here, Oh Doctor.
How dare you come into this place.
Boldly peddling your snake oil,
What a fucking sad disgrace.

Leave this place immediately.
Get out of here. Begone.
Get this straight: WHEN HELL FREEZES OVER
will you mutilate our son.

Related Posts:

Poetry Corner - To Me

Poetry Corner - Circumcision Scar

Edgar Schoen Showing His Age

Sunday, March 31, 2019

Poetry Corner - To Me

This is the sixth in a series of poems and song parodies that I wrote for a contest that centered around male infant circumcision. The contest encouraged original songs and poems, as well as parodies of other works. For my last Poetry Corner entry, I posted a poem inspired by the Japanese song "Akatonbo."

This time around, I'm posting a parody based on poetry written by American circumcision mogul Edgar Schoen.

Actually, this was the first poem I ever wrote concerning circumcision. It was a reaction to poetry I heard recited by Edgar Schoen on the circumcision episode of Penn and Teller's Bullshit.

It's a great work of art like the statue of Venus,
if you're wearing a hat on the head of your penis.
When you gaze through a looking glass, don't think of Alice;
don't rue that you suffered a rape of your phallus.
~Edgar Schoen on Penn and Teller

That's what I heard Edgar Schoen recite on Penn and Teller. Hearing this horrendous monster recite poetry to praise his own goddamn work made me so angry I couldn't stop thinking about it. First he mutilates children, and then he writes poetry about it. It made me fucking sick. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. Until finally I came up with my own poetry to help me cope. The following was the best I could do:

To Me
Some people liken the circumcised penis
To beautiful art, like the statue of Venus.
Reducing their subjects to art in a palace,
They care not that men rue the rape of their phallus.

But To me, such a penis just looks very sad,
regretfully mourning the sheath it once had;
Crushed in a clamp and sliced off at birth,
or soon after waiting 8 days in a bris;
Fixed in a state of perpetual despair,
with its tender and vulnerable glans
forever exposed to the air.

When I first heard Schoen's poem, it wasn't clear to me that the first two lines were actually a backhanded compliment to anatomically correct male genitals. In fact, after reading the whole work, which can be found here, I realized the whole poem was bemoaning the fact that male infant circumcision was a dying trend. He was desperately attempting to label having a foreskin a "passing fad," which makes no sense when you consider that the foreskin is a normal, healthy body part found in all male infants at birth, just like ears, lips and eyelids.

It's interesting he compares having a foreskin to the Venus of Milo, which is *missing* her arms. Rather delusional if you asked me. Boys aren't born "missing" anything; circumcised boys and men are the ones whose foreskin has been sliced off.

Perhaps the most damning part of Schoen's poem is this:

When you gaze through a looking glass, don't think of Alice;
don't rue that you suffered a rape of your phallus.

He appears to be admitting in broad daylight what male infant circumcision is. His own words say it; circumcision is a "rape of [the] phallus."

I'm not sure what is worse; the fact that this despicable excuse for a human being actually wrote poetry for his sick, disgusting obsession, or the fact that he actually managed to get not one, but TWO POEMS published in what is/was supposed to be a respected medical journal, the American Journal of Diseases in Children. (Both poems readable here.) As if writing poetry glorifying male infant genital mutilation weren't enough, the editors of the journal didn't see a problem with publishing it in a peer-reviewed journal. Posting poetry expressing profanity against the human body in what is supposed to be a professional medical journal makes a mockery of science and modern medicine, like graffiti tarnishing an important building. What were the editors thinking?

Anyway, this is the poem that started it all.

I really do think it is disgusting that circumcisors see themselves as "artists," and helpless children their unwitting subjects. I explore this idea on a separate post about ikebana, Japanese flower arrangement.

"My body, my choice."

May this one day apply to boys and men also.

Related Posts:

REPOST: Of Ecstasy and Rape, Surgery and Mutilation

Random Thought: Is Circumcision Human Ikebana?

Poetry Corner - Circumcision Scar

Thursday, February 28, 2019

Poetry Corner - Circumcision Scar

This is the fifth in a series of poems and song parodies that I wrote for a contest that centered around male infant circumcision. The contest encouraged original songs and poems, as well as parodies of other works. For my last Poetry Corner entry, I posted an original poem, trying to encapsulate the feeling of helplessness that I feel at not being able to do anything to stop the mutilation and abuse of children unable to fend for themselves.

This time, I'm posting a poem, inspired by the melody of the Japanese children's song, "Akatonbo."

The word "akatonbo" means "red dragon flies" in Japanese, and in this song, they serve as a reminder of the singer's long-lost childhood.

When I first heard this song, I thought the melody was rather sad, as if looking back at a traumatic memory wishing it would have been different. I had to find out what the lyrics were, and sure enough, they reflected the melody perfectly.

Here are the original Japanese lyrics in both Japanese script and English translation:

赤とんぼ
夕焼け小焼けの赤とんぼ
負われてみたのはいつの日か

山の畑の桑の実を
小籠に摘んだはまぼろしか

十五で姐やは嫁に行き
お里の便りも絶え果てた

夕焼け小焼けの赤とんぼ
止まっているよ竿の先

Red dragonflies
Red dragonflies
In the red sunset
When was it that
I watched them
On someone's back last?

In mountain fields
We gathered mulberries
In small baskets
Or was it just
An illusion?

At fifteen
My big sister left home
To get married
Her letters have
Long since ceased to come

Red dragonflies
In the red sunset
Look, one has stopped there
On the tip
Of a bamboo pole

Having seen what the song was about, I was inspired to write lyrics that may reflect what a grown man who resents having been circumcised might feel now that he is older, aware of what has happened to him, and unable to change the past. Rather than reflect the Japanese translation, I wrote them to fit the rhythm of the original song. In my version of the song, a circumcision scar replaces the dragonflies, both serving the same function of taking the singer back to a time when things were different.

Circumcision Scar
Back when I was in my mother's womb,
Back when I was born
Intact and whole,
There at her breast I'd suckle
Mindless of what was to come

Sleeping blissfully rocked in her arms
Long ago it seems
Oh that life
Had been that way forever
Was it only just a dream?

Then a stranger took me from her breast
Oh so suddenly
Behind closed doors
There on a table
Men with scalpels had their way with me

Time has passed, I've yet to understand
Now that I am grown
Now when I see
My circumcision scar
Tears are always sure to come.

"How can you remember?" ask those who wish to belittle a resentful man's feelings.

An intactivist friend of mine once said something along the lines of:

"A circumcised man is reminded of his circumcision every time he urinates, showers, masturbates or makes love. The question is, how could he forget?"

Even if you can't remember, even if you don't; the scar is there day in and day out to remind you, for the rest of your life.

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Wednesday, January 30, 2019

Poetry Corner - Lullaby For the Damned

This is the fourth in a series of poems and song parodies that I wrote for a contest that centered around male infant circumcision. The contest encouraged original songs and poems, as well as parodies of other works. For my last Poetry Corner entry, I posted a song parody based on a song called "Greenfields" by an older American folk-singing group called "The Brothers Four;" and an explanation as to why I chose this song.

This time around I'm posting an original poem I wrote, called "Lullaby for the Damned."

When I wrote this poem, I wrote it from a feeling of helplessness, powerlessness; first, for the child, who is in an unescapable predicament, and second from me as an onlooker unable to do anything about it.

This is how I felt the first time I ever saw a video of an infant circumcision, with a poor child strapped down to a cutting-board, unable to move, unable to escape, and this is how I continue to feel today.

Short of getting on my knees and begging parents not to put their child through this, short of beseeching doctors to adhere to that dictum of medicine, "First do no harm," what else can I do?

Nothing.

And what else can a child do?

They say that victims of abuse, whether it be sexual, emotional or physical, have a coping mechanism to deal with the pain. As a way to escape what's going on, the victim will imagine him or herself outside of his or her body, in order to detach themselves from what's going on; they imagine their souls escaping their bodies and that they are floating above the room as they look down and watch what's going on. This coping mechanism is known as "dissociation."

Witnesses of male infant circumcision report that as the child's penis is being filleted, the child lets out shrieks and screams unlike any other cries they've heard. The child often blows his lungs out, unable to scream any more, and eventually passes out. He goes into a state of "shock," often called "sleeping" by unsympathetic doctors. What is happening is that, this is how the child is coping with what is going on; this is their escape.

What are doctors thinking as they do this?

Are they actually there, in the moment?

Or have the souls of the doctors too left the very room?

In order to escape the shrieks and screams?

Or in the case of male doctors, away coping with that same familiar pain they experienced decades ago?

As they crush and dice, are they reliving the whole thing?

Trying to get away still?

Is cutting other children a continued attempt to escape that which, for the rest of their lives, will haunt them whenever they urinate, masturbate, take a shower or have sex?

As I stand there, helpless, powerless, all I can do is say this prayer in my head...

Lullaby for the Damned
By Joseph Lewis

Sleep on, oh little one,
And pray that you don't wake.
Escape the tethered body
That a knife will soon come rake.

Drift away to slumberland,
Your struggle is in vain.
Only there can you be safe,
and never know the pain.

Sunday, October 21, 2018

Poetry Corner - Song Parody: "My Foreskin Home"

This is the third in a series of poems and song parodies that I wrote for a contest that centered around male infant circumcision. The contest encouraged original songs and poems, as well as parodies of other works. For my last Poetry Corner entry, I posted a haiku and an explanation of its meaning. This time, I'm posting a song parody based on a song called "Greenfields" by an older group called "The Brothers Four."

I suppose it's appropriate to talk about the original song first, as many of my readers will probably not know it. The Brothers Four was an American folk singing group of four men, which had its heyday in the 1950 and 60s. I only became aware of this group relatively recently, through a friend of mine who has an appreciation for American folk music. He is fond of playing various music from the 50s, 60s and 70s in his car, and through him I also came to like music from those eras. It was through my friend that I came to like music by Simon and Garfunkel, the Carpenters, Peter, Paul and Mary and the like.

My friend and I were on a road trip when I first heard this song. When I asked him who the group was, he told me about The Brothers Four. He had a CD with the group's greatest hits. I was hooked. There were other songs on the CD such as "Seven Daffodils" and "Try to Remember." For many reasons, the song "Greenfields" stood out.

Here are the lyrics to the song:

"Greenfields"
By The Brothers Four
Once there were greenfields
Kissed by the sun
Once there were valleys
Where rivers used to run
Once there were blue skies
With white clouds high above
Once they were part of
An everlasting love
We were the lovers who strolled
Through greenfields.

Greenfields are gone now
Parched by the sun
Gone from the valleys
Where rivers used to run
Gone with the cold wind
That swept in through to my heart
Gone with the lovers
Who let their dreams depart
Where are the greenfields that we
Used to roam.

I'll never know what made you run away
How can I keep searching when dark clouds hide the day
I only know there's nothing here for me
Nothing in this wild world left for me to see.

But I'll keep on waiting
'Til you return
I'll keep on waiting
Until the day you learn
You can't be happy
When your heart's on a roam
You can't be happy
Until you bring it home
Home to the greenfields and me
Once again.

When I first heard "Greenfields," the song gave me a feeling of loneliness, of longing for what was once there. This was reflected in the minor key in which the song was written, as well as the lyrics themselves. I couldn't help but think of circumcision and the feeling a man who resents this unwanted intrusion on his body might feel. The lyrics in the original song also seem to lend themselves to allow me to reference foreskin restoration. I decided to write a parody for the poetry contest.

Here is the song reinterpreted in my parody:

"My Foreskin Home"
Parody by Joseph Lewis

My Foreskin Home
Once there was foreskin
And I was one
Once there was tissue
Where veins and nerves used to run
Once I had a foreskin
I would have been proud of
Once it was part of an everlasting love
I was born perfect when I
Had foreskin

Foreskin is gone now
Shorn by someone
Gone is the tissue
Where veins and nerves used to run
Gone with the cold knife
That cut into my heart
Gone with the doctor
That tore my skin apart
Where is the foreskin my glans
Once called home

I'll never know why it was torn away
How can I keep searching, I'm ridiculed all day
I only know, that it was robbed from me
No one in this world could give it back to me

But I'll keep on stretching
'Til it returns
I'll keep on tugging
Until the day they learn
I can't be happy
While my glans is exposed
I can't be happy
Until my glans is home
Home in the foreskin I had
Once again

I hope you enjoyed it. Please check out past Poetry Corner entries in the links below.

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Thursday, August 2, 2018

Poetry Corner - Haiku

This is one of a series of poems that I wrote for a poetry contest which centers around the topic of male infant circumcision. For my first Poetry Corner, I posted a poem inspired by a Bruce Springsteen song.

This time around I'm going to publish a haiku.

A haiku is a type of Japanese poetry that follows a syllable pattern of 5 - 7 - 5. The idea behind a haiku is that poets have a very limited set of parameters to work with. The effective haiku poet invokes an image, feelings and thoughts. To achieve this, he must choose his words carefully.

To unpack so much with so few words; that is the idea behind a haiku.

Without further ado, the poem:

Circumcision rite
Music, dance, and food, and drink
Blood and pain remain

This haiku was inspired by the picture for this post.

Few Americans know this, but in countries other than the United States and Israel, boys are circumcised at later ages.

Particularly in the case of Islamic countries, boys are circumcised at major ceremonies, where boys are dressed in elaborate clothing and given consolation money and gifts.

Huge parties are held where the boys' circumcisions are "celebrated."

It is similar for Jewish boys, where their parents throw parties with food drink after they have their foreskins cut off.

Who is celebrating?

Who is the party for?

Not for the boys, that's for sure.

While the adults have their party with music, dance, cake and punch, the boys sit there, stunned, trying to process the betrayal that had just occurred.

Look closely at the picture of the Turkish boy in "royal" garb above; there is blood on his hands.

After the party, after the food, after the drinks, the blood and the pain remain.

Even when the blood is gone and the wound is healed, the mental and physical scars, both indelible, remain until the boy's death.

The blood and pain remain until death.

That is curse of circumcision.

Men who resent their circumcision are often told "It was so long ago. How can you even remember?"

A man touches his penis when he urinates, masturbates, makes love and takes a shower. The question is not “How can he remember?”, the question is “How can he forget?"

I end this post by quoting a poem written by Antwone Fischer.

Who Will Cry for the Little Boy?

Who will cry for the little boy?
Lost and all alone.
Who will cry for the little boy?
Abandoned without his own?

Who will cry for the little boy?
He cried himself to sleep.
Who will cry for the little boy?
He never had for keeps.

Who will cry for the little boy?
He walked the burning sand
Who will cry for the little boy?
The boy inside the man.

Who will cry for the little boy?
Who knows well hurt and pain
Who will cry for the little boy?
He died again and again.

Who will cry for the little boy?
A good boy he tried to be
Who will cry for the little boy?
Who cries inside of me.

Muslim boy, about to be circumcised.

All the money in the world could never buy back

what is about to be stolen from him.
Notice where his hands are.

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