911 Thoughts

....American lives are NOT more important than other people's lives

911 Thoughts

 

 

“Our grief is not a cry for war”

                             --Artists Network, Refuse and Resist

 

 

“Beta nki tutasala” (What are we doing)

                             --Old African saying

 

 

New York City 9/11/01:

She walks down the street

numb,

peering side to side

pausing,

showing his picture to everyone who looks.

Tears streak her brown skin

as reality of his loss

sinks deeper in,

yet searching, as if just looking

will make him appear by her side,

and ease the vacuum of why

that echoes, mockingly in her heart.

 

Friends have asked me,

write a poem about these events, Red.

Write about 911,

and the horror from the sky.

Tell us what you think.

Can you give us some hope

that when the dust

and tears

settle from our eyes,

we will still be able to see the sun.

How??

What words can I use to describe

or even surmise,

all the reasons why.

How do you explain to your grandkids,

“the war has come home.”

“They have put us in harms way.”

 

New York City, 9/11/01:

Yes the ‘war’ has come home,

so many innocents have paid

a blood price for a globalized monster,

grown, nurtured, raised

in the dark soils of the USA.

 

Southern Iraq, 9/8/01:

U.S. and British ghosts

swoop down on a ‘radar installation’

that turn mysteriously into a village.

8 civilians known dead,

many others injured.

 

Baghdad, Iraq, 2/91:

Clutching her injured child to her breast,

she flees collapsing buildings,

while thunder surrounds her;

she is looking frantically for shelter

from ‘smart rain’

pouring down from the night sky.

Explosions almost drown out

her screams.

Screams for a lost generation:

how do you rebuild a generation?

 

West Bank, Gaza, Any Day:

Young comrades pick through

blood soaked rubble of once homes

looking for survivors of

‘made in the USA’ helicopter terror.

Or, picking up stones to fight off

‘made in the USA’ tanks

spewing out collective punishment

needed for new Israeli settlements.

 

Beirut, Lebanon, 1980:

Safely, miles out to sea,

the USS New Jersey

spits out salvo after salvo,

painting the city with fire storms.

Thousands die. thousands more

made refugees in their own country,

punished for harboring

Palestinian refugees who refuse to

recognize ‘stolen land’

now claiming to be Israel.

 

New York City, 9/11/01:

The view of passenger jets

lingers in our vision.

Over and over they seem to play with,

dance with,

then mingle with those towers

until only twisted steel,

burnt flash,

and crumbled cement remains,

creating a mass grave.

 

Vietnam, 1970:

The village explodes.

Children running

naked,

flesh singed, burnt,

burning,

as liquid fire drops

from high flying 52’s.

Napalm, an English word,

which in Vietnamese, Chinese, or Khmer,

means DEATH!

CAI CHET!!  SI WANG!!

 

Hiroshima / Nagasaki, 1945:

150,000 human beings

now only shadows

seared into the concrete;

human outlines

that still scream their agony,

heard even today by anyone

who doesn’t have selective amnesia,

or believes the bomb ‘saved lives’.

 

New York City, 9/11/01:

What words can explain the loss

of loved ones, friends?

What words can capture

the vacant look of the Black woman

seeking her young daughter

who had her very first job interview

on the 104^th floor?

What emotions are left,

after the search for loved ones

finds only gray dust and charred stench,

whether New York, or Baghdad, Beirut,

Belgrade, Gaza, Chile, Guatemala,

El Salvador, My Lai,

Sudan, Mogadishu or Kabul?

What can prepare you for the

sickening sweet scent of

burnt flesh carried on a lazy breeze;

or dust coating everything with

the stink of human blood?

 

Post 9/11/01:

And now there is talk of,

preparations for,

retribution,

justice,

revenge,

WAR!

More words the people of the world

understand all too well.

DEATH!!

 

Post 9/11/01:

Every day now, the powers that be

prepare us for more untold horrors;

hype us with red, white and blue views.

They pass onto us today’s news:

“Congress passed new war legislation…

“unnamed sources report that…

“a hig government official (who remains anonymous)…

“the word at the white house…”

SPECULATIONS: there are 50 governments that harbor

                                 or support terrorism.

                                 Several undocumented Arabs have been

                                 arrested trying to buy illegal chemicals.

INNUENDO: known terrorists are said to have links to                                             Afghanistan.

RUMOR: the next attack could come as early

                  as 9/22…

                  Air Force One was threatened today.

                  Terror may come in the form of chemical

                  or biological….

All the conjectures ‘fit to be news;’

Bin Laden is the one, Iraq, Iran,

somebody in the Sudan,

someone, somewhere, has to be made to pay.

Conjecture pumped out continuously

24

7

why we got it straight from heaven,

so it must be true.

 

New York City, Aftermath:

For many, the future is hard to imagine,

uncertainty weighs heavy

like an echo that bounces endlessly

off tenement walls.

Like the way the ‘WHY’s’

multiply with each official explanation

and grows from whispers to amplified

crescendos of NOOOOOOOOO! NO!

Not in our name.

You cannot exploit our grief,

our sorrow for so many lost lives

into your ‘holy war of retribution’;

into your vision of Homeland Security

and more repressive police powers;

into your call for justice,

envisioned as an Americanize world.

The people of our planet

do not need another

unjust war. And yet,

as long as this system continues,

as long as organized greed,

backed up by Washington bullets reign,

these horrors will continue

to rain from the skies.

 

Afghanistan, 10/07/01:

Today the bombing began.

More horror fell from the sky

as talk of even more countries, people

are added to the ‘suspect’ list.

One thing is sure, those hundreds,

thousands who have already died,

had nothing to do with 9/11.

How long? How many more will die

before we put it to an end?

 

Written 10/04/2001, edited on 10/07/2001

Final version and revision 9/12/2021

 

Postscript: After 20 years, the US pulled out its troops in bloody defeat. And after much death and destruction, here is another truth has been revealed:

“What we see in contention here with Jihad on the one hand and McWorld/McCrusade on the other hand, are historically outmoded strata among colonized and oppressed humanity up against historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system. These two reactionary poles reinforce each other, even while opposing each other. If you side with either of these “outmodeds”, you end up strengthening both.

 

While this is a very important formulation and is crucial to understanding much of  the dynamics driving things in the world in this period, at  the same time we do have to be clear about which of these “historically outmodeds” has done the greater damage and poses the greater threat to humanity; it is the historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system, and in particular the US imperialists.”

      ‘Basics, 1:28’, pg. 20, by Bob Avakian

Author's Note

.....thanks for reading...
Where I worked in 2001 was a factory that had people from all over the world working there.... I called it an "international city".... some of my co-workers knew I wrote poetry and asked me to write something about 911... the above poem is the result.... many of these people thanked me after reading it saying they were sickened by the event of 911, but also of the patriotic war mongering being spewed out 24/7...

One final note: in the original I was able to hand write in the word DEATH in all the languages spoken where I worked, I was not able to do that for the above version...

Reviews

[h d e rushin]

I'm reading how former president Trump tried with all the powers of the presidency and the department of justice, to undo the results of a fair and honest election. Which, in my view, is the culmination of deceit not the beginning of it. Beirut, Gaza, Nagasaki, Mississippi, West Phili, East Detroit, Miami Dade, Afghanistan, Compton, South Memphis, Southside Chicago, etc. everywhere that people can be dehumanized and then deposited into the failed sacrarium of "democracy" is not only victory from it but passport away from it. If it's someone else's child being bombed, well, that's ok, just as long as the Hot Pockets are ready. That's the whole idea of suburbia in the first place, to stand as fireproof from the dying societies of drugs, excess and homelessness. But what happens when Meth and Heroin finds it's way onto manicured lawns and soccer practice fields; what happens when the jet fuel used to bowl over
Iraq Mosques, bowl over New York high rises?

Once again you step outside the better notions of the poet to surrender to the sacrilegium of decency. But 98.7% of all poetry is fantasy or, at best, a nudge to the mournful, miserable world of heartache and torch songs. NO where is it written that poems should be about truth, stepping out on faith or being dangerous....Your amazing....dana

[redzone]

thank you Dana for your very kind and straight forth review.... you mentioned both domestic and international terror and I think it is very important that you also mentioned West Philly (the bombing of the MOVE house) and could have also mentioned the bombing of the Black neighborhood in Tulsa in 1921... the USA has always been the world leader when it comes to terror and terrorizing the people in every corner of the world and here at home...

Ntozake Shange once wrote that a poem should "make you feel".... her insight into what art is all about is something I have taken to heart and have attempted to write (through poetry) the people's stories, to help people see our inner connectedness and to see where our interests, the interests of humanity lies... I do this not for a touchy feely kind of peace, but in the reality of the real world and the urgent need for revolution and a whole new world... so it is with this, I welcome what you have said about "truth, stepping out on faith or being dangerous".... and what makes this so much fun is that it can be done in metaphorical and colorful ways...

again, thank you Dana...

[h d e rushin]

Nice you mentioned Shange / as I do, her play "For Colored Girls" who's characters danced through both suffering, heartache, sexism and racism. That's what the poet tries to do if they can, somehow, drag themselves out of the morass of acceptance. Acceptance is fake love. Fake sex. Fake patriotism. You display your danger for all to witness......dana

[redzone]

Hi Dana, hope you don't mind my assking, what do you mean by "I do her play For Colored Girls"?? do you act in the play?? or perhaps direct??? curious as when I volunteered at Revolution Books, I came across Shange's book "For Colored Girls...." it was one of those books that forced me to come to grips with aspects of life I was not familiar with... it saddened me and at the same time made me even more committed to the need for a real revoolution... I guess in short, Shange made me "FEEL"... while so many things in culture, want to dull your senses into acceptance of the way things are.... we humans are capable of so much more and better than this, aren't we?? and isn't this also what a poet should be about as well??... Curt

[h d e rushin]

Can you imagine that "For Colored Girls" is more relevant today than ever? No I don't act anymore but did so at Wayne State. We took authoritative oaths in the 90's about truth , culture, music and history that is today being passed off as "critical race theory". WTF is that? That book certainly changed my life also. Thanks for your insight my friend.