Music

Amanda Palmer wrote a poem dedicated to Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

by Tyler Munro

photo from Amanda Palmer’s Facebook

There’s few artists who embody “yikes” like Amanda Palmer, the belligerent former front-woman of the Dresden Dolls and attention seeker who last year raised the ire of an entire industry with her controversial Kickstarter campaign. Never one to avoid controversy, the well spoken songstress has outdone herself this time, inexplicably writing a poem in the second person about—and dedicated to—Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

We’ll post the poem in full below, since it’s long (and awful), but first we’ve got to ask: seriously? Poor timing and judgement aside, Palmer seems to be using reactions to the poem as a way to validate herself. If you don’t like that she wrote it, or think it’s a bad idea, then it’s your fault. According to Palmer, you just don’t get it. When someone says that poetry isn’t the answer to a tragedy like this, Palmer takes the bait and makes it about her right to write poetry, not the argument that her publishing such poem might be a bit too presumptuous for its own good.

As a Boston native (and, y’know, a person), Palmer’s well within her rights to express her thoughts on the tragedy as she best sees fit. This, however, is something she maybe should have kept to herself. It’s opportunistic and exploitative and countless other unflattering synonyms. It seems obvious that she’s trying to humanize both sides of the tragedy, but now isn’t the time to empathize with the alleged perpetrator.

Here’s the poem:

you don’t know how it felt to be in the womb but it must have been at least a little warmer than this.

you don’t know how intimately they’re recording your every move on closed-circuit cameras until you see your face reflected back at you through through the pulp.

you don’t know how to stop picking at your fingers.

you don’t know how little you’ve been paying attention until you look down at your legs again.

you don’t know how many times you can say you’re coming until they just stop believing you.

you don’t know how orgasmic the act of taking in a lungful of oxygen is until they hold your head under the water.

you don’t know how many vietnamese soft rolls to order.

you don’t know how convinced your parents were that having children would be, absolutely, without question, the correct thing to do.

you don’t know how precious your iphone battery time was until you’re hiding in the bottom of the boat.

you don’t know how to get away from your fucking parents.

you don’t know how it’s possible to feel total compassion in one moment and total disconnection in the next moment.

you don’t know how things could change so incredibly fast.

you don’t know how to make something, but the instructions are on the internet.

you don’t know how to make sense of this massive parade.

you don’t know how to believe anyone anymore.

you don’t know how to tell the girl in the chair next to you that you’ve been peeking at her dissertation draft and there’s a grammatical typo in the actual file name.

you don’t know how to explain yourself.

you don’t want two percent but it’s all they have.

you don’t know how claustrophobic your house is until you can’t leave it.

you don’t know why you let that guy go without shooting him dead and stuffing him in some bushes between cambridge and watertown.

you don’t know where your friends went.

you don’t know how to dance but you give it a shot anyway.

you don’t know how your life managed to move twenty six miles forward and twenty eight miles back.

you don’t know how to pay your debts.

you don’t know how to separate from this partnership to escape and finally breathe.

you don’t know how come people run their goddamn knees into the ground anyway.

you don’t know how to measure the value of the twenty dollar bill clutched in your hurting hand.

you don’t know how you walked into this trap so obliviously.

you don’t know how to adjust the rearview mirror.

you don’t know how to mourn your dead brother.

you don’t know how to drive this car.

you don’t know the way to new york.

you don’t know the way to new york.

you don’t know the way to new york.

you don’t know the way to new york.

Responses to the poem on her website are plentiful and mostly not the kindest. They range from response poems to rants to vitriolic insults with the odd bit of empathy for Palmer sprinkled throughout. This is her second reaction to the Marathon: one day after the incident, she wrote this two part blog post ruminating on what happened.