September 11, 2004
EvilToasterElf
Posts: 1,119
For a while it was hard
to take the ferry past those two
holes in the sky
I was convinced that the downtown smog
would avoid that patch of air
And now I take the subway
through that space
like rising in a jet through a cloud
that exists only on the approach
and exit
The train buckles as if driven on rails of shame and corpses
The concrete hole in the city shivers
the womb of modern history
penetrated by steel and rage
inside its white darkness, it's thought
leap into the atlantic, to feed the lumbering
air craft carriers
terror, anger, doubt, violence, vengeance, shame
all these mix
into a blank stare
like a dream played out on the eyes of a coma patient
Quarells echo through the nearby office buildings
who have for the first time seen the sun
What is a fit tribute to its ghosts who stumble in the dust?
Any park, any place of forget and remembrance calculatingly
mixed
serve only as a wilted bouquet in the terminal wing
a reminder of life for that fleeting moment
between a memory of a dead relative
and a drop of moisture pressed from the brain to the
ducts behind the eye
All around those concrete stumps are the carrion and vultures
of tragedy
Tourists no longer pretend to be moved, but inhale the air
greedily with camcorders and cameras
hoping to stop history around them, put little bookmarks in their
placid memoirs
And to their pockets the souvenir peddlers swoop
opportunists or jobless downtrodden
I hate them and pity them
but I do not blame them, history has only rarely lacked spectators
that is all for now, I do not know if more will come
ETE
to take the ferry past those two
holes in the sky
I was convinced that the downtown smog
would avoid that patch of air
And now I take the subway
through that space
like rising in a jet through a cloud
that exists only on the approach
and exit
The train buckles as if driven on rails of shame and corpses
The concrete hole in the city shivers
the womb of modern history
penetrated by steel and rage
inside its white darkness, it's thought
leap into the atlantic, to feed the lumbering
air craft carriers
terror, anger, doubt, violence, vengeance, shame
all these mix
into a blank stare
like a dream played out on the eyes of a coma patient
Quarells echo through the nearby office buildings
who have for the first time seen the sun
What is a fit tribute to its ghosts who stumble in the dust?
Any park, any place of forget and remembrance calculatingly
mixed
serve only as a wilted bouquet in the terminal wing
a reminder of life for that fleeting moment
between a memory of a dead relative
and a drop of moisture pressed from the brain to the
ducts behind the eye
All around those concrete stumps are the carrion and vultures
of tragedy
Tourists no longer pretend to be moved, but inhale the air
greedily with camcorders and cameras
hoping to stop history around them, put little bookmarks in their
placid memoirs
And to their pockets the souvenir peddlers swoop
opportunists or jobless downtrodden
I hate them and pity them
but I do not blame them, history has only rarely lacked spectators
that is all for now, I do not know if more will come
ETE
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Comments
this poem was both sad and angry
angry at human nature
it also has a very fitting and powerful ending
if there is more to come, I'll gladly read
the part I like best is from:
"What is a fit tribute to its ghosts who stumble in the dust?" till the end.
but there are plenty of good verses everywhere
thankyou for reading
Exactly. It's good poetry.
When words can make one sit back in their chair and ponder. It's good.
I just lived it.
Thanks for the mental visuals. It was all clear.
Damn I'm still thinking about all that.
nice work.
I especially identify with the lines "All around those concrete stumps are the carrion and vultures
of tragedy
Tourists no longer pretend to be moved, but inhale the air
greedily with camcorders and cameras
hoping to stop history around them, put little bookmarks in their
placid memoirs
And to their pockets the souvenir peddlers swoop
opportunists or jobless downtrodden..."
But in a way, people wish to feel part of the loss... the pain of those who witnessed and lost transcends, those "tourists" hoping to breathe in the emotion... and like he wrote "little bookmarks in their placid memoirs," People visit Normandy for that same reason... to feel the depth of pain and hopefully rekindle some sort of humanity in their own hearts. To gain a perspective, or perhaps just as a scene of death... a macabre sense of "alive."
It is this detachment, and this loss of respect, that for "Veterans" of that day, who will their whole lives feel real human attachment to it, the spectacle of tourism is one of the most heinous thoughts imaginable. Because for us the consequences are not the economy, the war in iraq or any other of the far reaching effects, but the lives lost there, the faces that only for a moment drift from that dark spot where all memory revives itself, and they smile just for a minute at you as if through a whole in time, and drift back just at the moment when someone offers you a camera timidly and asks in hawaiian shirts to have you take their picture in front of this hallowed ground.
It is of course unreasonable, but things like this will never be rational
really powerfull poem Evil
strong images
i felt the atmospehere..falt the whole thing!!
~~its better to be hated for who you are than be loved for who you are not~~
F.ZAPPA
the wilted bouquet was not always so
and the tear presses toward the eye with less loss behind it
and the tourists are moved... or they wouldn't have found themselves there... and perhaps some of them mindlessly buy trinkets to take to their homes that will eventually wind up in a landfill somewhere in America... or other places
and sometimes spectators lift prayers, the sight seen, an image on which to talk to god
and the directly affected continue to spite tragedy
as is their way
THEIR rememberance
each must become private
lest the wound re-open
I sat between my friend, his middle finger, and Columbine High not long ago. A defining moment of loss in whose way I tried to stand, looking for ghosts. I didn't see any, but there's a hole in ground there, too.
Art is conditioned by history, however personal the theme of art, for, to quote a cliche here, "The personal is the political". Throughout history, oral traditions have related to us wars in a place called Troy, and furthermore have told us of the effect of war on the character of individuals such as Agamemnon and Achilles; First World War poets such as Owen and Rosenberg have enriched our understanding, both of the human cost of modern, mechanised warfare, and the notions of the "poetics of pity" that survive the horror of carnage. Without art, we would lack a cultural reference for understanding how humans cope with the worst of possible historical events. And without the poetry being produced in DC ghettoes and in Iraq that USsoldier is kindly sharing with us on the board at the moment, important voices speaking as a break through the midsts of numb reticence, repression, violence and fear would be lost.
The most historically powerful and longlasting of poetry is, to quote Shakespeare here, by the art of known and feeling sorrows, pregnant to good pity. We will learn much of ourselves and our understanding of compassion through the art produced as a response to 9/11.