Ode to 9/11
When I was… Blue sky
white sheet so soft,
duvet, billowy, mounds of soft
white cotton sleep
gentle, alone, groggy
gently lifting my eyes,
pushing down into springs to yield from slumber.
East window, red terracotta roof across street,
workmen, bedroom east window, on roof.
standing at attention arms pointing to heaven.
I sit up erect, confused, turn to south bedroom window.
Dark black smoke, fire, chimney, 8:55am.
Shit! Late for work, Late!
Black wool trousers, white button down oxford.
Time Warner Building 6th Avenue.
Late, blur, elevator, late, lobby, blur,exit front door.
Late, blur, madison avenue, left on 38th street, late, late, hurry!
Work, late, 6th Avenue, bryant park, panic, oh my god, late, blur.
Fashion week, white tents, models in evening gowns hailing taxi crying.
Late, blur, walk, faster, blur, late, blur.
Fox News ticker tape “New York under attack”, “New York under attack”, “New York under attack”, “New York under attack”, “New York under attack”, “New York under attack”.
Yellow taxi, Driver yells “It’s falling down”.
Turn and look,
Canyon of Black smoke,
black sheets of dark,
billowy mounds of black soot,
I’m late for work,
Evacuate building, he said.
but I’m late for work,
No one gets inside,
Go home!
Blur, Blur, Blur, Blur, Blur, Oh my god, Blur, Blur, Blur, Blur.
- Julian Graciano Nunez
This upcoming Sunday is the fifteenth anniversary of the attack on the 2001 World Trade Center. It was a day like no other seared into my memory.
484 years earlier in September of 1517 Friar Martin Luther was thinking and composing his "95 theses".
Hopefully, Sept 11, 2001 was a once in a 500 year event or never again. It was a tsunami in the sea of human thought.
The implosion of the buildings created a fine dust like a toxic version of baby powder. It covered hundreds of gray, soot powdered people shuffling through Times Square from downtown to get home. Zombie Apocalypse. Days afterward an electrical fire scent lingered through the gusts of winds blowing through midtown Manhattan. The lungs of 9/11 survivors were poisoned.
New York City at the turn of the century was the think tank of intelligentsia.
I love a New Yorker magazine cartoon picturing two Godzillas in the canyons of Manhattan skyscrapers chomping and swallowing people. One turns to the other and says "Wow, I feel so good right now. The other Godzilla replies, Yeah, these things are loaded with antidepressants."
Billionaires Row on fifty-seventh street boasts palaces in the sky. Construction of micro apartment buildings are one size bigger than prison cells except you pay, not the government.
Meanwhile in Dallas, resort style luxury apartments are going up by the dozen.
Does the scent and smoke still linger?
