Reminded, yet again, of the events in NYC on September 11, 2001 — a temperate autumn day in the workaday Northeast — and still astounded by the ways in which those events have transformed into a national trauma of international proportions, I’ve penned the following humble verse.
It’s said that on grief’s pathway, the sharing of our stories is key to our understanding of precisely where we stand on it. Thanks to the uses made of the day’s events — uses which, by informed definition, can be labeled terrorism — I find the need to revisit, recount, exhume & examine, in the telling of this particular tale.
Read on, if you will — unless unpracticed poetry gives you a pain. My intentions are humble; I just aim to recount.
How strange the transformation of the lone island’s atmosphere
Under sunlit clouds serene
What drew us from bed remained beyond accustomed consciousness
Until collective vision drew it inward
And collective breath sent it outward
And the lone island became the nation’s property
There was trouble traveling that day
There were checkpoints posted between north and south
A foul smoke enveloped us
We walked through the haze in our business
Reminded continually by self-appointed heroes
To walk through the haze in our business
To breathe easily, unceasing
The nation’s property
From property to opportunity
From investment to religiosity
From tragedy to travesty
Our memories were drawn into the collective body
The collective body became the embodied Executive
The embodied Executive became gargantuan
And accostomed to the incineration of human beings
For its very existence
It strove to provide itself incessant nourishment
Enjoining our memory to its wake
To rule the world
Rendering the world its oxygen
And the collective irrelevant
To itself
While the nameless sacrifice lay scattered
In unclaimed pieces
By the sewers