Poem | april is cruel

Dear Listeners,  

Please note the audible caution with brief description of content prior to play.  Part memoir, part history, the poem describes back-to-back April Fools' Days that were particularly cruel for one military family and community.  The tragedies that befell my neighbors and classmates exemplified powerful lessons:

• Physicians are often lonely and suffer in silence 
• Military psychiatrists are vulnerable to suicide just as the patients they treat
• A military widow with children determined to keep family together was potent opposition for an F3 when it ripped through the neighborhood

Dedicated to veterans and military families affected by moral injury, PTSD, and suicide.  On a separate note, April marks a history of tragic freight.  

In a world of cheaply made bargains, the social and commercial determinants of health are not jargon! Thank you for taking the time to listen.  ciao, for now.   

drmichelabull.com

Transcript

april is cruel 
by Dr. Michela Bull

 April is a cruel month.

On the first day of every April

We are named the fool.

It’s cultural, intolerable, and annually deliverable.

April was a month of redundant disaster 

Back-to-back years

It’s a blur to remember,

for a military physician and his family.

From a motel room that night, 

he called his wife and said,

“Tonight, I’m going to take my life…”

There had been an F3 in 1973

When mother Earth roared so loud 

She scored, 

on the scale named Fujita.

April marks the month of disasters 

Turn styled, like a fool’s shiny penny:

The fall of Saigon, the Murrah building bombing, the Titanic sinking, the Boston bombing, Virginia Tech Shooting, Waco Siege, Lincoln’s assassination, Columbine, the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Deepwater Horizon, Black Hawk Down

I could go on…

April was the month Adolf Hitler was born.

April showers bring May flowers, they say.

April still makes one cower,

Remembering its hours.