Words from mouths that cannot sing
Feathers from a thousand folded wings

I can smell the smoke on the wide reaching wind
the city is alive with fire
The TV is on
and I am listening to ten minute prophecies from the mouths of modern America

The sky has fallen
The horizon is dead
Two New York men were killed today
and I barely made it out of bed

I will never understand this
Its magnitude
Its birth untold months ago
Drawn out still stiff
and already sharp
from the mouth of an angry man
Forged in the cold hate for a tarnished giant
with two red hands
a black smile
and a silver tongue

I cannot comprehend its rolling totality
The sudden and final loss of life
The screams and the silence

For what?
For punishment?
For empty hands and stomachs?
For revenge?
Pain for pain and hate for hate
we are repaid the sins of our fathers and our thieves

They did not deserve this
They the dead
The sacrificed
The wounded and suffering
The panicked and dying
Tthe unraveled families and lost souls
swallowed in the fiery mouth of men mad with politics and power

We may not have deserved this
but we should have expected it
We did not.
Because we did not
we stand stunned and shattered
limping, legs broken
two legs and a heart

We will trade blows now
with sober faces and nation sized fists
With heavy handed declarations of anger and war
We will weep, mourn, and retaliate
We will eat our dead and remember
We will rise with fiery eyes and ashen mouths for God, country and...
A way of life that we will not surrender despite its greed and waste

Pierce me too
I am as guilty as the rest
with white teeth
as straight and shiny as science can make them
A big belly
as full as fast food can fill it
But I bear no illusions of honor or grace
Bury the dead with the dignity due them
Mourn their passing for they are missed
but do so with two open eyes
for we are as much an enemy as they are
Somewhere we are loathed for everything we love
Somewhere we are hated for the things that make us proud
Somewhere we are the enemy for the things we take for granted
For being who we are

This is not an end or a beginning
it is another wound from an already old war
It bleeds but it will heal
It hurts but it will bind
Tonight there is only rest and mourning
We will save decisions for the dawn

AcB 09.11.01