When
the Skyline Crumbles Was
sitting Astoria kitchen chair about to vote mayoral primary, then would've
hopped subway to work Soho's Spring Street turned TV on for quick election
check when CNN switched to
picture of World Trade Center #1 with surreal gaping hole blowing dark smoke
out a new mouth. Witnesses still in shock were describing a plane flying directly
into the building's side when a second plane suddenly crashed Twin Tower 2
and orange flames & monstrous dust rolls began replacing the
city's world renowned skyline. Soon the big city's tallest buildings crumbled,
one at a time with 50,000 individual heartbeats working in Twin Bodies,
it was clear this horror going to be planetfelt.
I stared stunned at TV
another half hour, called Vivian working Canadian
summer forest job to assure I was physically okay & mourn together, then wandered
my Queens neighborhood almost everyone walking mouths open silent,
eyes unblinking, two women & two men on 31st Street cried into cell phones,
trying reach
loved ones working the WTC, a mover moaned Age Old prophecy to his buddy loading
the van: The
world has changed, bro.
Wednesday I subway'd into Manhattan looking
to volunteer with
bad back, only found location to leave a donation check, all other slots remarkably
filled for the moment also wanted to sense the air fellow Applers were
breathing, smoke that torched bodies now tangibly coating tongue & nostrils,
dust burning all 3 eyes 7th Ave above 14th St almost empty rush hour
so our dead could
be counted, a clear road to the next realm, perhaps a friend's friend miraculously
uncovered alive, given
space to speed St. Vincent's Emergency Room.
Thursday I sat half hour
Union Square with a Tibetan group meditating
for peace as mainstream TV helped lubricate America's war machine hosting
Flat Earth hawks urging 80% toward retaliation against Bin Laden or any country
harboring Bin Laden's cells even as academic analysts noted moments
before those cells now
spread to 30 countries including US. Fox News had hosted a discussion between
the far right &
further right Newt Gingrich: the terrorists should be found & crushed
Jeanne Kirkpatrick: we already know who they are, why wait a
procession of military experts advocating carpet bombs & napalm. On
Friday night, 3000 New Yorkers, mostly young, candlelit
Union Square to mourn the victims & stand for peace with signs like: War
is Not the Answer & Honor the Dead; Break the Cycle of Violence
CBS-TV covered the event as another cute show of the
city's spirit of togetherness sandwiched between two dozen stories of a flag-waving
public meat-hungry
to support Bush Jr's rush to war.
After years of U.S. missiles flying
into outward shores, a decade after 100,000 Iraqis cruise missile'd to death
under Father
George The war has now come home, where it's apparent to all what
a senseless random murderer is
the one-eyed giant Terror how it eats its innocent victims screaming alive,
feet flailing how it breaks the strongest of backs, rips flesh wide open how
it tosses arms East, legs South, skull & genitals North
& West how it forces hardened athletes to dive head first 99 floors
to a concrete death softer than its iron teeth how it leaves no paperwork
behind to comfort the living how it answers pleading mothers & weeping babes
with a knife
to the belly, glass shards to throat how it burns a skyline of fresh bones
to fragile white ash
Now, we walk memory's long marathon to honor our
5,000 dead now we watch a million New Yorkers work courageously to meet
the initial test daily tasks small to heroic, delivering socks, pulling two-ton
girders off
fallen firefighters atop creaky broken floors ignoring fear everpresent, unknown
particles filling the air now we see whether Americans can meet the
next human challenge: Protect the innocent & reject Terror in all its disguises,
even strutting
on TV in our own leaders' garb? Or merely act a mirror of its latest highrise
profile? The sometimes bitter juices of justice, law, human rights, & peace?
Or shot after shot of eternal bloodthirst?
Eliot
Katz NYC 9/01 |