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
The last three lines…almost yesterday. And the embodied executive has created countless more sewers inside of desert islands where more sacrifices to it’s incessant nourishment lay unclaimed. Only a witness could express something like this Wilderness Wench. Or a victim.
Agreed, super — the victims are ultimately undifferentiated.
Thanks for taking time.
This is hauntingly beautiful … thank you for sharing w/ us ww.
Thanks for reading, Miss O.
The transformation of actual event to legend still astounds me in its totality, as if nothing occurred that didn’t conform precisely to plan & what actually did occur is now fully accounted for. At the same time, any manner of actual closure is rendered impossible.
This is the core crime of our regime and the greatest tragedy of the paralysis of the brains and conscienses of Americans as they succumbed to their fear and anger. That they allowed the event to be encased in a shrine and weaponized to fuel the engines of greed, hatred, and imperialism.
as olivia said w/w-‘hauntingly beautiful’ and also unbearably sad.
Frankly, I wish I felt no need to express these things — but I suppose that’s something of the human prerogative.
Thanks for your time, ink.
Very powerful and from a deep place within your being….thank you WW.
I watched in horrified astonishment, as this event was manipulated and morphed “from tragedy to travesty”.
I will never understand the willingness of the large number of Americans to follow, and indeed, embrace, the hatred and vileness that has transpired.
It is not just the “…nameless sacrifice…” that lays unclaimed in the sewers…it is the very soul of the country.
Peace
That’s right.
One reason I like to try & communicate in some manner of poetic form is that the words can remain open this way; you add to it what you know.
Thanks for reading, dada.
This is profound, wench. The utter obscenity of using death and grief to justify more death and grief is horrifying.
Strange how the tragedy of the towers impelled some of us to weep with the citizens of Bagdad as Shock and Awe spewed destruction from the sky, while others cheered that empty, senseless revenge on the innocent.
Sometimes, the sadness and anguish I feel are unbearable. You write with the depths of your soul, your being. If others can feel you know you have done well. Peace my friend.
Thanks for giving the piece a read, susanw.
Y’know, in NYC on 9/11 I didn’t weep, though some around me did. For my part, I remained rather stoic, walking others through the day, moving on through.
Now, however, as we gather news about the continuing horror unfolding due to the completely voluntary actions of our apparent leadership, I weep daily. Senselessness on top of senselessness — that far exceeds what was visited upon us, as a whole, in September 01. As the buildings burned on & there seemed to be no further attacks in store, we continued our lives, went to work, moved around, gathered together, ate & drank, developed complacency.
What our nation has undertaken ‘in response’ (but of course not) is thoroughly murderous insanity.
I was stoic that day too, and am rather stoic by nature, but like you, there is seldom a day now when I don’t find tears on my face, at one point or another.
It is some comfort to share that pain with others: your work reaches out from your heart to touch others in understanding. Thank you, WW.
I was furious over the “911 changed everything” propaganda. It changed everything only if you haven’t been paying attention. Terrorism has been an ongoing problem for our European allies for years; it’s not new. The Bush I administration turned a cold shoulder to numerous requests that the USA share intelligence so we could all cooperate in preventing terrorist attacks and bringing the criminals to justice. Europe treated the tactic of terrorism as a police matter, not an excuse to invade sovereign nations. It was our government’s REACTION to 9-11 that changed everything. We are the pariah of the world.
Thanks to leezy & to everyone else, again, for giving this offering a read.
I can only express sincere thanks for the space in which to add my little bit.
I want to add my thanks to you for writing this and engaging a discussion.
Months ago I read something by Kid Oakland where he talked about the fact that we never really did have a national conversation about 9/11. It struck me as odd in a way, and yet remarkably true. We have “referred” to it alot, but have we really talked about it? I think not.
I know that I felt so alone in the weeks after 9/11 as I continued to grieve and felt the whole nation marching to revenge and war. What I have found since I got into blogging years after the event is that many of us felt that way – we just didn’t have a way to find each other at the time. Then I remember after the 2004 election, the “I’m sorry” web site that went up, allowing all of us in this country to apologize to the world for the presidential election. I read it for hours and cried. It was so healing to know I was part of a community – even though we didn’t know each other. It would have been interesting to have such a place immediately after 9/11.
I remember the site also, NL. Thanks for reminding me of it.
Didn’t you feel your smallness that day? I did. Separated from my children by a few city blocks, I felt that the smallest puff of wind could knock me right off the face of the earth and the happenings of that day were so big that no one would notice.
Fear makes us remarkably compliant, and to use that fear as a tool to control people for political gain is pure evil.
I think many in our country are still so stuck in the fear that they are unable to hear the voice of reason.
WW and I were about a 20 min walk away from each other that morning, but didn’t really know how to get in touch, as we were both in transit.
I screamed and probably shed a few tears, but my shrieks were of the deaths to come; knowing full well that CheneyCo. was perpetrating Planetary Evil in the name of greed and paranoia. I shrieked not in any fear, because I fear not the Dark Side. I shrieked knowing that the Bakers and Kissingers and Bushes of the world were going to unleash their plans, ready to conquer rightousness with double-speak. Every predictive thought on that morning came true in the subsequent 5 years of their reign of terror.
I shrieked for the lost innocence, the lost destinies of the millions about to be disregarded by the bastards in the White House. Millions, millions, across the globe, cannot act out their proper destinies because of the selfishness of a few dozen individuals who live in paranoia and greed.
The toxic black cloud rose especially high that day, keeping most of us in Brooklyn out of it’s fumes. I was out walking with George that afternoon, and I found a charred remains of some legal document that had been burnt and lofted in the air — thousands of documents flittered down to earth like dull sparkles as the black smoke cloud released it’s contents down on us all beneath it’s slithering trail. Mother Earth was polluted once again, as Saddam had done in Kuwait in 1991. The dirty bastards!!!
All night long, at a bar, I kept screaming at the television (something I’ve always been good at and take pride in) again and again — how DARE you unleash the key to give CheneyCo. free reign to deceive us all!! How DARE you silly men, with your boxcutters, with your shortsighted revenge give these maniacs the gift of duplicity and the opportunity to use double-speak on the dumbed down, inane American people! How DARE you, you FUCKERS perpetrated the key to opening the Doors of Evil! FUCKERS. Time and again, I’d see the footage of the plane slamming into the South Tower, and I’d shout out FUCKERS! FUCKERS! Idiots. Beyond. Belief. They didn’t know what they were doing.
I called in sick the next morning, because I still hadn’t found WW yet. By then it was obvious what had happened, that the City was not under seige, and traffic and the subways started moving again, albeit the checkpoints and limited movements, especially the cordoning off of Downtown. Yes, my job would have let me come in if I wanted to work. Thankfully, no word was said about my choice or of all the others who chose to mourn or re-evaluate.
I shed no more tears, I felt no fear. I only knew that there was a tremendous amount of work ahead for me and the millions of people of good will and positive intentions acrosss the world to defeat the forces of Evil that were about to be unleashed. And unleashed it happened in March 2003 when the cowards of the United States Air Force began the destruction of the careful infrastructure of a nation oppressed by a dictator and 11 years of brutal sanctions. Today’s civil war and Mideast schism is a direct result of the decisions on 9/11/01 by CheneyCo. to stick the wedge in right then and there to split the world into two factions: Those with Cheney and those not.
I will never forgive the 19, nor will I ever forgive the dozens of powerbrokers, the Blairs, the Putins, the Addingtons, the Sauds, the Bushes, it is not my job or role to forgive them. They must, through the excruciating slow turn of the Wheel of Karma, forgive themselves for the crimes against not only humanity they are committing, but against all the lives of this huge and diverse planet.
I have no fear.
I was not at all politically aware prior to 9/11, so I had no idea of what was to come. But I sure informed myself in a hurry afterwards!
Anger is much more productive than fear.
For my own part, SN, I have to say that I didn’t feel my smallness; I felt my strength.
WW – I wanted to add my thanks. I had read your comment in the thread that initiated your sharing of this. I was hoping you would write.
Our memories were drawn into the collective body
The collective body became the embodied Executive
The embodied Executive became gargantuan
Upon seeing in Michael Moore’s film the video of Mr. Bush in the FL classroom on September 11th, I have wanted on billboards and everywhere the burning towers juxtaposed with Mr. Bush sitting frozen in that classroom with the time displayed. That’s what comes to my mind first whenever I see a 9/11 towers visual – and the intense anger that all that has followed has been lies and manipulation – tragedy to travesty and on to more tragedies – tragedies that didn’t have to be.
No, they did not — a criminal waste beyond measure, as of yet incomplete in scope.
Powerful and touching upon deep places within, WW! It is difficult for me to revisit it, I cannot imagine what it is for those who were there and lost family, friends and co-workers to such senseless tragedy. . .and all the senseless death and destruction carried on in our names since.
Blessings and Hugs
Shirl
Thanks for your reading, Shirl.
Fortunately for me, I did not lose a loved one to the attack, but in a sense I did lose my home town, as it became central to the GOP’s 9/11 mythology. We New Yorkers suddenly yearned, spiritless, for Our Leader’s benevolent fortitude to deliver us, weak as lambs, from our damnation.
This certainly wasn’t the place nor the people I recognized.
What we’ve lost collectively since then, however, is of far greater significance; the 9/11 narrative now contains that loss.