Photo of Eli Hart.A Poem on the Eli Hart Murder: ‘A Woman’s Right’ by Joshua C. Frank The Society February 24, 2023 Culture, Poetry 15 Comments . A Woman’s Right Eli Hart’s story was highlighted by the Daily Wire here. Come hear of little Eli Hart— His father fought the “family court,” Misnamed misandrists lacking heart. His mind-sick mother got support From “child welfare” workers, who, __Despite his father’s wishes To raise his son himself, just threw __The boy to mother vicious. And when she learned her ex’s goal, She went to Walmart for a gun, The one to “blow the biggest hole” To end the life of her own son. Although it shows these evil times, __It’s blown out of proportion, Because a child-murder crime’s __No different from abortion. . . Joshua C. Frank works in the field of statistics and lives near Austin, Texas. His poetry has also been published in the Asahi Haikuist Network. NOTE TO READERS: If you enjoyed this poem or other content, please consider making a donation to the Society of Classical Poets. The Society of Classical Poets does not endorse any views expressed in individual poems or commentary. CODEC Stories:Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window)Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) 15 Responses Brian A Yapko February 24, 2023 What a painful, horrific story, Josh. The opposite of a feel-good poem, this nonetheless shines a necessary spotlight on two things: the deep shortcomings of the family court system and the evil of abortion. I’ve practiced law many, many years and in that time have only handled three family law matters. That was enough. If you want to see human nature at its rock bottom worst (much worse than in criminal law, no exaggeration) go to family law court where bitter, spiteful people who used to love each other libel each other with the most heinous, vile accusations imaginable. And it is the children who suffer. My heart is broken for Eli Hart and his father who struggled to do the right thing but was up against a godless system beholden to ideology and experts for hire. Reply Joshua C. Frank February 24, 2023 Yes, when I read that story, I immediately wished I hadn’t… it wouldn’t go away until I wrote this poem. What you say about so-called “family law” (a better name would be “anti-family law”) comes as no surprise to me, as divorce is inherently all those things, which is why the Lord hates it (Malachi 2:16). My heart is also broken for them both. Thank you very much for telling us about your experience as a lawyer. Reply Roy Eugene Peterson February 24, 2023 Good grief! What a sad story that bravely depicts the heinous crimes committed in society these days. The parallel of child murder to abortion is an apt one befitting present-day loss of morality in our society. Brian makes a great point about the godless system turning a deaf ear and hardening their hearts to “salvation.” Thank you, Joshua, for calling our attention to such deficits in the legal system. Reply Joshua C. Frank February 24, 2023 You’re welcome, Roy. Someone had to call out those monsters. Just one correction, though: abortion IS child murder. An unborn baby is as much a child as a newborn baby or a six-year-old. Reply Priscilla King February 26, 2023 The biggest difference is that a six-year-old has friends and will be missed. Joshua C. Frank February 26, 2023 Priscilla, thank you for replying. I have a question for you: does the presence of friends make it murder to a greater degree than if the victim has no friends? This sounds like the pro-abortion argument that boils down to the baby being human if and only if he is wanted. Also, when a miscarriage takes place, the deceased baby’s family and their friends grieve, because they love him even before birth. (See my poem “Elegy for Miran Sutherland.”) Joseph S. Salemi February 24, 2023 The real murderers of this little boy are the stupid bureaucrats in Child Protective Services, with their mindless adherence to “proper procedure” rather than to what was clearly best for the child. I’ve written about this sort of addled mentality in one of my essays here (“Precious Procedure and Process”). Reply Joshua C. Frank February 24, 2023 I suppose that’s in part true. (I’ll have to read your essay.) However, I think the real murderers are the liberals. Eli Hart’s blood, along with the blood of every baby who has died by abortion, is on the hands of every liberal, even former liberals like myself. For one, it’s their damned feminism (not swearing, I really do mean damned) that repealed the rights of fathers. Entire generations of women have grown up believing that “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,” an analogy that shows that feminists think of men as objects, and unnecessary ones to boot. Fathers were once the respected heads of households. Now fathers can be sold down the river at their wives’ whims, just as slaves could be sold by their masters for any reason at all. Divorced men have told me that once a man divorces, he effectively loses his children. No wonder young men these days don’t want to marry; who wants to start a family only to get kicked out of it? (I read that in liberal states like California, the divorce rate is at least 75%.) No wonder so many young men are trying to “become women”—it’s a step up socially, like when light-skinned blacks (who were in reality mostly white) tried to pass as (completely) white. I use the analogy because being male in a feminist world is like being black used to be. For another, their insistence on big government and the power of government to take away people’s children has led to what you mention. Effectively, all children belong to the state and are merely permitted to be raised by their parents. They push Hillary Clinton’s bogus saying that “it takes a village to raise a child” to justify raising children away from their parents as described in Plato’s Republic. I’ve seen the village and don’t want it raising my children. Especially in light of this event. I can’t wait to see our liberal guests try to justify their liberalism in light of this event, since it’s the logical conclusion of their beliefs. My guess is that they won’t try, because deep down, they know they can’t. After all, the issues I’ve brought up were some of the big ones that made me want out of liberalism when I was in my twenties. Reply Joseph S. Salemi February 24, 2023 Left-liberals are incapable of believing that they are wrong on any subject. (I distinguish them from the old-fashioned liberals of the past, who are now pretty much extinct.) You’re correct about young men basically opting out of marriage permanently. Many of my male students have privately told me that they have no intention of getting roped into a legal obligation that is totally skewed against their rights. They will simply have brief affairs, or make use of prostitutes. As for Hillary Clinton’s “It takes a village” cliche, I’d revise it somewhat: It takes Arkansas to make a pair of village idiots like her and her husband. Reply Joshua C. Frank February 25, 2023 You’re right. Old-fashioned liberals have all been forced to choose a side, as I was. I used to be one of those men you describe, for that exact reason. I’ve heard that a lot of those young men nowadays are getting vasectomies so those brief affairs don’t get them slapped with paternity suits and forced to financially support children to whom they have no legal rights, just like divorced fathers. No wonder they’re turning away from sex and toward online pornography. The culture can’t survive long like this. Incidentally, Hillary Clinton got the saying from an African proverb; Africans raise children communally, or so I’ve heard. Given how badly groupthink has turned out in the West, I think that’s going to be the Achilles’ heel the left will someday exploit to make them into clones of us. Margaret Coats February 24, 2023 This is a story I wish I’d never read. Your poem is so mild, Josh, in comparison to the horrific reality that happened, with bureaucrats placing the defenseless child in mortal danger. But as you say, it happens every day with smaller children confined more tightly inside the body of someone whose consent allows bureaucrats to pay for doctors’ dirty work. Reply Joshua C. Frank February 24, 2023 Margaret, I feel the same way; I’d rather not know about this, too. From Susan’s example, I’ve learned to deal with upsetting news stories in this way. This incident taught me that the news is just too upsetting for me, so hopefully there won’t be any more of my current-event poems. But there probably will be. A poem has to be mild compared to the reality. As Richard Price expressed so well, the bigger the issue, the smaller you write; you don’t write about the horrors of war, but about one child’s burnt socks on a road. As horrible as the things I’ve mentioned in my poem are, they’re just burnt socks on a road compared to the awful reality that 1) fathers have been legally gelded and 2) thousands of children die even more gruesome deaths than this at the hands of their own mothers every day in the United States alone, and their fathers don’t get to save them, either. We should all be at least as horrified by an abortion as we are by this incident. If we aren’t, we need to ask ourselves why. Reply Susan Jarvis Bryant February 25, 2023 Josh, this poem makes a huge point in a subtle and sensitive manner – a poetic observation that I believe is the best way to deal with a sick and evil act that makes the heart and mind recoil from such depths of human depravity. You point out in this tough-to-write poem all the failings of an inept and biased system – the very path that led to an horrendous end to an innocent young life. The title frames your message perfectly and your carefully chosen words say it all with compassion and courage. Thank you very much for your sane eye in an insane world. The truth matters. Reply Joshua C. Frank February 25, 2023 Thank you, Susan, for all your compliments about this one… and for your own sane eye expressed in your poems. The worst part, as I’ve mentioned in other comments, is that this “sick and evil act” is replicated thousands of times every day in the United States alone against a much younger crowd, and few are anywhere near as horrified about that. I’ve been wanting to write about these issues for some time, and as hard as it was to deal with having read the article (I would rather not know about this incident), the fact that I had to write a poem about it gave me the opportunity to point out the injustice that is inherent to modern culture and its vaunted feminism. I don’t think the system’s architects are inept or even merely biased. I think the system works exactly as it was intended to work by the powers that be; family, religion, culture, tradition, and everything we hold dear make us much wilder and harder to control, and that’s why the powers that be want all these destroyed. I think they just want us to think they’re merely inept and biased. Reply Susan Jarvis Bryant February 26, 2023 Josh, it saddens me to say, you are absolutely right: I don’t think the system’s architects are inept or even merely biased. I think the system works exactly as it was intended to work by the powers that be… Your words above are words that we should all pay heed to. Incompetence is no longer an excuse the authorities who aim to tear down their country should be able to hide behind. I will say this, the people at ground level, those employed by the system, may well be inept… the current education system does them no favors – to think for oneself in today’s society is a crime, which is why heinous atrocities occur… when one’s mind belongs to those who govern, there’s no telling where that will lead and the reason why there’s no telling is because history is being torn up and rewritten. Leave a Reply to Margaret Coats Cancel ReplyYour email address will not be published.CommentName* Email* Website Captcha loading...In order to pass the CAPTCHA please enable JavaScript. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email. Δ This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Brian A Yapko February 24, 2023 What a painful, horrific story, Josh. The opposite of a feel-good poem, this nonetheless shines a necessary spotlight on two things: the deep shortcomings of the family court system and the evil of abortion. I’ve practiced law many, many years and in that time have only handled three family law matters. That was enough. If you want to see human nature at its rock bottom worst (much worse than in criminal law, no exaggeration) go to family law court where bitter, spiteful people who used to love each other libel each other with the most heinous, vile accusations imaginable. And it is the children who suffer. My heart is broken for Eli Hart and his father who struggled to do the right thing but was up against a godless system beholden to ideology and experts for hire. Reply
Joshua C. Frank February 24, 2023 Yes, when I read that story, I immediately wished I hadn’t… it wouldn’t go away until I wrote this poem. What you say about so-called “family law” (a better name would be “anti-family law”) comes as no surprise to me, as divorce is inherently all those things, which is why the Lord hates it (Malachi 2:16). My heart is also broken for them both. Thank you very much for telling us about your experience as a lawyer. Reply
Roy Eugene Peterson February 24, 2023 Good grief! What a sad story that bravely depicts the heinous crimes committed in society these days. The parallel of child murder to abortion is an apt one befitting present-day loss of morality in our society. Brian makes a great point about the godless system turning a deaf ear and hardening their hearts to “salvation.” Thank you, Joshua, for calling our attention to such deficits in the legal system. Reply
Joshua C. Frank February 24, 2023 You’re welcome, Roy. Someone had to call out those monsters. Just one correction, though: abortion IS child murder. An unborn baby is as much a child as a newborn baby or a six-year-old. Reply
Priscilla King February 26, 2023 The biggest difference is that a six-year-old has friends and will be missed.
Joshua C. Frank February 26, 2023 Priscilla, thank you for replying. I have a question for you: does the presence of friends make it murder to a greater degree than if the victim has no friends? This sounds like the pro-abortion argument that boils down to the baby being human if and only if he is wanted. Also, when a miscarriage takes place, the deceased baby’s family and their friends grieve, because they love him even before birth. (See my poem “Elegy for Miran Sutherland.”)
Joseph S. Salemi February 24, 2023 The real murderers of this little boy are the stupid bureaucrats in Child Protective Services, with their mindless adherence to “proper procedure” rather than to what was clearly best for the child. I’ve written about this sort of addled mentality in one of my essays here (“Precious Procedure and Process”). Reply
Joshua C. Frank February 24, 2023 I suppose that’s in part true. (I’ll have to read your essay.) However, I think the real murderers are the liberals. Eli Hart’s blood, along with the blood of every baby who has died by abortion, is on the hands of every liberal, even former liberals like myself. For one, it’s their damned feminism (not swearing, I really do mean damned) that repealed the rights of fathers. Entire generations of women have grown up believing that “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,” an analogy that shows that feminists think of men as objects, and unnecessary ones to boot. Fathers were once the respected heads of households. Now fathers can be sold down the river at their wives’ whims, just as slaves could be sold by their masters for any reason at all. Divorced men have told me that once a man divorces, he effectively loses his children. No wonder young men these days don’t want to marry; who wants to start a family only to get kicked out of it? (I read that in liberal states like California, the divorce rate is at least 75%.) No wonder so many young men are trying to “become women”—it’s a step up socially, like when light-skinned blacks (who were in reality mostly white) tried to pass as (completely) white. I use the analogy because being male in a feminist world is like being black used to be. For another, their insistence on big government and the power of government to take away people’s children has led to what you mention. Effectively, all children belong to the state and are merely permitted to be raised by their parents. They push Hillary Clinton’s bogus saying that “it takes a village to raise a child” to justify raising children away from their parents as described in Plato’s Republic. I’ve seen the village and don’t want it raising my children. Especially in light of this event. I can’t wait to see our liberal guests try to justify their liberalism in light of this event, since it’s the logical conclusion of their beliefs. My guess is that they won’t try, because deep down, they know they can’t. After all, the issues I’ve brought up were some of the big ones that made me want out of liberalism when I was in my twenties. Reply
Joseph S. Salemi February 24, 2023 Left-liberals are incapable of believing that they are wrong on any subject. (I distinguish them from the old-fashioned liberals of the past, who are now pretty much extinct.) You’re correct about young men basically opting out of marriage permanently. Many of my male students have privately told me that they have no intention of getting roped into a legal obligation that is totally skewed against their rights. They will simply have brief affairs, or make use of prostitutes. As for Hillary Clinton’s “It takes a village” cliche, I’d revise it somewhat: It takes Arkansas to make a pair of village idiots like her and her husband. Reply
Joshua C. Frank February 25, 2023 You’re right. Old-fashioned liberals have all been forced to choose a side, as I was. I used to be one of those men you describe, for that exact reason. I’ve heard that a lot of those young men nowadays are getting vasectomies so those brief affairs don’t get them slapped with paternity suits and forced to financially support children to whom they have no legal rights, just like divorced fathers. No wonder they’re turning away from sex and toward online pornography. The culture can’t survive long like this. Incidentally, Hillary Clinton got the saying from an African proverb; Africans raise children communally, or so I’ve heard. Given how badly groupthink has turned out in the West, I think that’s going to be the Achilles’ heel the left will someday exploit to make them into clones of us.
Margaret Coats February 24, 2023 This is a story I wish I’d never read. Your poem is so mild, Josh, in comparison to the horrific reality that happened, with bureaucrats placing the defenseless child in mortal danger. But as you say, it happens every day with smaller children confined more tightly inside the body of someone whose consent allows bureaucrats to pay for doctors’ dirty work. Reply
Joshua C. Frank February 24, 2023 Margaret, I feel the same way; I’d rather not know about this, too. From Susan’s example, I’ve learned to deal with upsetting news stories in this way. This incident taught me that the news is just too upsetting for me, so hopefully there won’t be any more of my current-event poems. But there probably will be. A poem has to be mild compared to the reality. As Richard Price expressed so well, the bigger the issue, the smaller you write; you don’t write about the horrors of war, but about one child’s burnt socks on a road. As horrible as the things I’ve mentioned in my poem are, they’re just burnt socks on a road compared to the awful reality that 1) fathers have been legally gelded and 2) thousands of children die even more gruesome deaths than this at the hands of their own mothers every day in the United States alone, and their fathers don’t get to save them, either. We should all be at least as horrified by an abortion as we are by this incident. If we aren’t, we need to ask ourselves why. Reply
Susan Jarvis Bryant February 25, 2023 Josh, this poem makes a huge point in a subtle and sensitive manner – a poetic observation that I believe is the best way to deal with a sick and evil act that makes the heart and mind recoil from such depths of human depravity. You point out in this tough-to-write poem all the failings of an inept and biased system – the very path that led to an horrendous end to an innocent young life. The title frames your message perfectly and your carefully chosen words say it all with compassion and courage. Thank you very much for your sane eye in an insane world. The truth matters. Reply
Joshua C. Frank February 25, 2023 Thank you, Susan, for all your compliments about this one… and for your own sane eye expressed in your poems. The worst part, as I’ve mentioned in other comments, is that this “sick and evil act” is replicated thousands of times every day in the United States alone against a much younger crowd, and few are anywhere near as horrified about that. I’ve been wanting to write about these issues for some time, and as hard as it was to deal with having read the article (I would rather not know about this incident), the fact that I had to write a poem about it gave me the opportunity to point out the injustice that is inherent to modern culture and its vaunted feminism. I don’t think the system’s architects are inept or even merely biased. I think the system works exactly as it was intended to work by the powers that be; family, religion, culture, tradition, and everything we hold dear make us much wilder and harder to control, and that’s why the powers that be want all these destroyed. I think they just want us to think they’re merely inept and biased. Reply
Susan Jarvis Bryant February 26, 2023 Josh, it saddens me to say, you are absolutely right: I don’t think the system’s architects are inept or even merely biased. I think the system works exactly as it was intended to work by the powers that be… Your words above are words that we should all pay heed to. Incompetence is no longer an excuse the authorities who aim to tear down their country should be able to hide behind. I will say this, the people at ground level, those employed by the system, may well be inept… the current education system does them no favors – to think for oneself in today’s society is a crime, which is why heinous atrocities occur… when one’s mind belongs to those who govern, there’s no telling where that will lead and the reason why there’s no telling is because history is being torn up and rewritten.
