Time's clock ticking, drops
infinity into the rust of bedside tables.
In Bed-Stuy, in D.C, dear Baltimore. And you too,
Ferguson.
East Coast warriors raise high heavy heads.
Break loose shackles, blushing muscles. Veins
of ancients pump through us.
Now we cry for peace. Resilience and time
******* out from present pleasures. T.V screens.
Longing hours contemplating
forgotten dreams. Nightmares,
trickle blood out of nosebleed section patrons.
An operatic multitude of greed
and insanity. Corrupt millionaires
spit down on struggling, stuttering
lost and alone
actors, poets
the good politician.
The neighborhood bully weeps after swatting a fly,
and immortality feigns existence. Be here
now death, let them know the coming of peace,
spiraling black holes
of emotion and pride and dead boys.
Broken time continuous, and hearts.
9-11, 2001 rocked a nation,
what rocked you?

Amidst their struggle still to gain
Their tears have sunk for the suddenly slain
Sprinkled drops of warm red rain
The edge that stirs up a vast deep pain
Though our fragile hearts break again
They lie in our thoughts like a mild wild flame
Even as they return the way they came
Our minds were the graves they've always lain

September 1st, 2001.
I woke up to that same annoying alarm clock, 7:03 AM
Morning shower, morning coffee, morning breakfast –
I changed the calendar but I dropped the tack to hold it up.

September 2nd.
I’m thinking about October,
All the trees ablaze with orange and red, pumpkin pie in the season, cinnamon tingling in the air.
The new Spirit Halloween store opened up around the block. Superhero costumes are pretty cool.

September 3rd.
My mom takes me out to dinner because it’s Monday.

September 4th.
Routine

September 5th.
Routine

September 6th
In calculus, 11 is my favorite number.

September 7th.
Routine

September 8th.
Routine

September 9th.
My routine staccato.
Taxis responds after 3 calls,
My favorite professor gave me a hard time,
I wanna go home.
After the hustle of ants we call people,
loud street venders,
that creepy guy on the street corner,
NO, I do not want to try your new raspberry cheesecake Jack In The Box, I just wanna get my **** food and go home.
I arrive and melt into my sofa, falling asleep to the news.

September 10th.
No alarm clocks.
In the evening, my mom and I go out to dinner because today is Monday.
Red Lobster has the BEST seafood and while we’re eating,
she complains about the air conditioning in her new work place.
She works for some business in the twin towers.

September 11th, 2001
Instead of the alarm, sirens wake me.
I find the tack to hold up my calendar. – It’s Tuesday.
My feet, cold and lifeless, wander around the house until they trip over the scent of smoke.
Those sirens must’ve stopped nearby.
My mom is at work.
I want to get some air,
so I grab the keys off my splintered champagne desk,
****** them into ignition,
fingers wrapping around cruise control,
shifting into reverse,
the monotone GPS lady telling me to turn left.

The smoke is denser.
I follow her voice: turn right.
The smoke is solid.
Keep straight.
The smoke is suffocating.
In 3 hundred feet, turn left
The smoke is the sky –
Charlie Chapman gray.

My mom was at work.
Around me were firetrucks sparking with blinding flashes that screamed the word “emergency.”
My mom was at work.
The sight ahead was morbid. Unnerving. Disastrous.
It was like Halloween, except there were no superhero costumes, only firefighters and policemen.
My mom was at work.
The tower had holes punctured into their glass windows,
Smoke rising like leaves stemming out of the stump of skyscraper.
My mom was at work.
People like ants, fleeing, scattering, put on the mask of apocalyptic expression.
The throaty yells of “it was a plane” stuffed my eardrums
It was a plane, they said, it was a plane.
This was not routine.
My mom was at work.
The alarm woke me up.
I had my morning coffee.
It took all the synapses in my brain to deny what was right in front of me.
My senses detected telephone signals exploding with,
"I’m fine honey, don’t worry,”
Airlines confused and cramming.

I parked my car in overwhelming paralysis.
Above me, a screech of a whistle filled what was left of the air,
Followed by a boom that replicated my heart.
Frozen. Milliseconds frozen.
The plane was flying too low
WHAT HAPPENED?
There were people in those towers,
Everything was an epiphany --
Marriages, birthdays, fathers, sons, mothers, daughters,
Now cadaverous bodies antigravitating in rubble of boring office walls, family pictures.
Death in one swift move of terror.

My mom was at work.
We went to dinner yesterday.
My mom was at work.
The seafood tasted amazing.
My mom was at work.
She complained about the air conditioning.
My mom was at work.
She got a new job in the twin towers.
The twin towers are ablaze
The twin towers are spilling orange and red
They are sending ashes tingling through the air
This was not the October I asked for.
I longed for September 1st
I dropped the tack to hold up my calendar.

It’s Wednesday.
September 12th, 2001.
I did not sleep.
The news kept me awake, kept saying terrorist attack, terrorist attack, identified bodies, many mourning.
Because of their god, they lessened faith in mine.
This was the closest the public eye were to see a warzone-
Text messages cluttered with sympathy.
My routine changed for the rest of my life.

10 years later
Alarm clocks ringing, 7:03AM I stay in bed.
It’s Monday. I do not go out to dinner.
Instead, I drive 5 miles out to the cemetery.
People are still ants, pushing and shoving to where they need to go, they walk as if they had forgotten.
I no longer crave the red and orange of fall, cinnamon is foreign to my senses.
I hate the number 11 because it’s etched on your gravestone.
Your gravestone – gray and dense like the smoke
I wish they were not a constant reminder of the future I live in, but you don’t.
Today, there are no exclaiming yells of people or screeching whistles of planes.
Today there is only silence.

There is only silence.

In those strawberry fields, it seemed
They all marched too alive and real.
The unknowing, maybe sensing, screamed
“There’s no Jericho here to heal!”

In no small way, I understood,
The child watching that television,
There was more evil to match good,
When a plane made its second collision.

That’s when we realized the hardness of tomorrow
Mistakenly seen enough to tell
This was an attack our hearts had to sorrow
This, we knew, when the towers fell.

Still, we remember those things we felt
And try our best to seize the day
We remember when those watching knelt
Heart broken or fighting? Too close to say.


Beneath the rubble of the truth -
Heroes, lovers, sinners, thieves -
Beneath the terror of our youth -
We are all these things beneath.

That does not mean we are all to blame
Though, every one of us is lost
It doesn’t mean our mistakes got a name
Even still, we must pay our cost.

In our busy lives and concerning fates
There is a truth we must admit
As the prices rise and the moment rates
We must be reminded not to forget

There is a time to step back and see
At the demanding cry to all be free
That all that is asked, is a prayer to be
To Him, as He sorrows - cries…

Remember me.

10 years ago and today: there is an
empty space at some table
non-given advices or hugs dwell in the could have been
Knots of silences forms in the throats of those as they remember the names, the moments
Soothing memories are shadowed by the present pain
We promised not to forget.
Even if desired, is impossible,
When your disappearance has impacted so many, even if they didn’t know you
Even if they can only imagine who you were among the thousands of faces lost forever that day,
They can imagine you were
someone’s daughter, or son
Someone’s father or mother,
Someone’s grandfather or grandmother,
Someone’s brother or sister,
Someone’s uncle or aunt,
Someone’s friend or significant other
They can only imagine you, as a figure
fallen within the statistics
HOWEVER,
they cannot feel what some of us felt
In the agony of resignation,
slowly accepting the crude fact
As the days went by, as we held the thinnest of hope alive
In the unconscious human belief (it can’t be happening to us)
And the eternal minutes of waiting for a
phone call, turned into hours
and the visits to strangers in hospitals hoping to see a familiar face
And the dreaded visit that confirmed our biggest fear
To hear a five year old said “I’m mad at god” because he took you away
Some of us saw our sanity crumble
As the reality presented itself
Slowly digesting it during the holidays,
Our birthdays,
Your birthday,
The births of those that you did not get to meet,
Of those that find you strange in picture.
The moments in which we imagine what you would have said
The moments in which your memories comes interrupting the conversations and creating the eternal silence…
We may never forget, but we are still
learning to live without you
Love you always

Let the world always remember,
That fateful day in September,
And the ones who answered duty's call,
Should be remembered by us all.

Who left the comfort of their home,
To face perils as yet unknown,
An embodiment of goodness on a day,
When men's hearts had gone astray.

Sons and daughters like me and you,
Who never questioned what they had to do,
Who by example, were a source of hope,
And strength to others who could not cope.

Heroes that would not turn their back,
With determination that would not crack,
Who bound together in their ranks,
And asking not a word of thanks.

Men who bravely gave their lives,
Whose orphaned kids and widowed wives,
Can proudly look back on their dad,
Who gave this country all they had.

Actions taken without regret,
Heroisms we shall never forget,
The ones who paid the ultimate price,
Let's never forget their sacrifice.

And never forget the ones no longer here,
Who fought for the freedoms we all hold dear,
And may their memory never wane,
Lest their sacrifices be in vain.

09-30-10b.