In the black stairwell, human chains
form bracelets of a muted prayer.
"You could not see your hands," says Frey.
Inside the tower, workers shred
their silky shirts to fake
a gas mask in the soot.
"Weird," says Updike,
"silence of the heavens" rules
as planes desist from
cutting through the cotton clouds.
Grief is war's testosterone;
who am I to judge the stain
of semen on the global sleeve?
A woman stares through onyx glass
at body parts pasted on her window slats.
Ruin, rubble, all ignoble stickiness.
Flags go up in colored cloth
to meet the palettes of distraint.
Clothes and food come crawling out
from woodwork I had designated
selfishness of urban wrists.
Bodies pressed against the vile,
this ticking clock of hatred in its glory hour.
An eight-year-old sells lemonade,
mails her profits to the dead;
another brings her piggy bank,
sets it at the feet of gods.
We groan and breathe
the grave dust of this violence.
Heads hang low as fingers search
for apples of Hesperides
dangling from golden fleece.
You can't gut rainbows in the end --
light escapes, feeds
the thin of falling suns.
One man glues our stripes and stars
with duct tape to his brand new van.
A paint job doesn't matter now.
All that's white has fallen from a bruising sky.
Malt clouds are filled with grieving moons.
The Northern Star is frowning on
this faceless, surreptitious terror.
They violated innocence.
Show no courage, ownership.
As if that torture weren't enough,
we're tête-à-tête in guillotines,
rummaging potential guilt
our armies glue in history books.
This year's dose of burgundy
in JC Penny catalogues
will turn to tumid bags of blood.
Flags switch brittle colors on.
Who are they to snuff them out.
Is this an a cappella choir?
Could angels find another way
than guns and troops
to choke the devil in his bed?
My hands at Sunday Mass are cold.
Fish scales squirm before the hook.
Nightmares copy/paste their shades
on buttons of a marigold.
We need the wrinkled maps of gods.
Soldiers try on old fatigues.
Women guard thin phyllo sacks
beneath their eyes.
Pray their sons won't go to war.
Shield their nipples from the pull.
Hell's too good for Laden's bones
we chant and sing in
stone cathedral continence.
It's autumn now; I wonder why
petunias have the balls to smile
as winter inches toward its grave.
A lens is shooting memory.
Cameras pan the window frames
now void of glass.
Where once lay family photographs,
geysers of a tear erupt.
She trolls the carpet for a dream,
all the while reminding bones
they could be merely skeletons.
A grisly beard in deserts of Afghanistan
sleeps in urine of his terror.
Proud of its scent, we all suppose,
if scrolls alive on CNN
aren't hasty in their judgment rites.
All the why's, what if's, and corns
of hatred rear their brackish lumps.
Carnivorous ash implores the room
to grow a bullet's firm reply.
Votives flicker in a church,
groom the grieving countryside.
Prayers are swelling to a boil.
Every headline eyes must thumb
comes back a squirt of pepper spray.
Time will fade the color of blood.
A chartreuse rose will bloom again.
Right now her hands on the thorns,
flipping fingers at a god.
Oxygen is sparse and cold.
Pages from the fallen towers
mix with dusty negligees.
Gardens beg a justice leaf --
even if it's poison oak.
Bouillon cubes of peace are nice --
she wants carcasses, revenge.
Hurt imagines other wars
where snowflakes fell like swastikas.