Amid the increasingly dire struggle for the soul of America over “reproductive rights,” screenwriter, musician, producer and former Stanford poetry fellow Roderick Falconer strips away the euphemisms about abortion in his poem “The Sex Life of Fire” produced by The Daily Wire.
In the poem, Falconer affirms the inherent value of human life as he laments the “starless night” of abortion’s culture of death. Not “lumps of cells,” but “little souls” are “laid in layers of the lifeless dirt, found guilty of desiring to be born” of wanting to “be held by ones who were supposed to be waiting, who must be waiting for them,” he reads.
“They too had love to give for they were someone, not nothing, not no one, no matter all the worthless words that can be said, though they themselves never had a chance to speak,” he asserts. “The love that was their right, fetal expectations formed from instinct in the womb or long before, was cut away with knives and suction tubes …” But these severe realities must not be faced, he laments. “They must be dissolved, erased from memory, you see, and if mother feels regret or pangs of guilt there’s always counseling to heal and medication to forget.”
Video and full lyrics below:
We walk into the starless night.
The ground beneath our feet is wet
with babies’ blood, the sticky mud
of once warm life tossed out, discarded
in this restless resting place
where little souls are laid in layers
of the lifeless dirt, found guilty
of desiring to be born, to breathe the air
of morning, afternoon and night, feel
the sun’s befriending warmth, be held
by ones who were supposed to be
waiting, who must be waiting
for them.
They too had love to give for they
were someone, not nothing, not no one,
no matter all the worthless words that can
be said, though they themselves never
had a chance to speak. Somewhere
before this life, unspoken sentences
of tenderness were formed and then
cut off before they could be said, cut off
in ceremonies of lifeless latex hands
and disembodied masks that float
in blind bright auras of white rooms
with antiseptic smells, while mother
lay there waiting to be
done with them.
The love that was their right, fetal
expectations formed from instinct
in the womb or long before, was cut
away with knives and suction tubes,
cut out by deadly rays from strangers’
eyes, pierced by sterile unclean hands
and death addicted minds, all professional —
and just like mom, in a hurry to be done
with them, get on with something
more important.
How much are a couple lungs, a heart
and brain worth anyway — five hundred
bucks, more or less, though often lives
are nullified for free, so anxious
the community of the living to abolish
them, to lock them out of consciousness
forever — flush them down a sewer pipe
and float them out into the cold dark
trenches of the sea. They must be
dissolved, erased from memory,
you see, and if mother feels regret
or pangs of guilt there’s always
counseling to heal
and medication
to forget.