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December seventeenth, and the nice is cold and dark
As the eyes of the dead, staring out from the steel and drywall
Heaped like ripped clothes torn from a screaming woman’s body
Upon the frozen mud and rock, lavous rubble of a September morning
The sky is filled with drifting snowflakes, an all too real reminder
Of the ash and debris that filled the very breath of the city
Making it cough harshly, the burning phlegm of hatred in its throat
Nostrils burning with the smell of jet fuel and incinerated flesh
From every corner of the city, come the ghosts of the gloried and the ghastly
The souls of Ellis Island dancing over the graves of the newly dead
John Lennon’s guitar crying out to severed ears and crumpled limbs
Calling each one by name, to rise up and join in a macabre jig
The lights of a Christmas tree sparkling in the muddy lake grown here
Mesmerizes the cranes and wrecking balls giants, halogen-eyed crabs of iron
Screaming and moaning with each stab into the Devil’s tonsils
Rip away the flesh of the corpse, expose the bones, of the decaying giants
Cascading rain of blowtorch cinders, a waterfall of despair and desperation
Bodies and minds grow colder and harder to brutal reality of God’s handiwork
For we desperately believe we can control this masterpiece we call our home
Believe that we can rebuild what the clay and the earth have taken back
And foolishly, like the architects that envisioned iron reaching to the sky
As if man could reach up into Heaven with steely fingers
Grasp a hold of God and cage him like a hubris cockatiel for our own pleasures
Control, once and for all, that most elusive query for which we will kill
Learn, once again, the lessons forgotten at Hiroshima and Nagasaki
How brightly flesh burns in the vanity of our luxurious illusions
That we are all just a yellow star, a raised arm, and a cattle car
Just an airline ticket flaming across Mohammed’s vengeful brow
From the horrors we bring upon ourselves and others, every day of our lives.
*The number of unaccounted bodies on December 17th at the World Trade Center.
©2001, Rick Sheeley
Musician, writer, About Poetry Forum poet, Rick Sheeley is a biker living in Phoenix, Arizona. His two volumes of poetry are Poet's Leap and Quilts of Life.
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