I hear them screaming through
the sound of falling and splashing
and stumbling down staircases.
Of mangled steel twisting glass
and concrete skins ripping away
from the building’s skeleton.
I hear the slithery rush of jet fuel
scrambling down chases and elevators
at first and second impact, the aftershock.
Igniting fireballs through the hallway.
Explosions rocked the foundations
trembling in little earthquakes.
I hear the mad stampede roar.
I hear the panic bars unlatch.
Then the cacophony of sirens,
the tolling of alarm bells,
the symphony of shock,
the avalanche of horror,
the carnage of the missing,
and the agony of the trapped.
I hear them- peoples of the world,
helpless among the tangled mess
of floor slabs toppled like a deck of cards.
The gradual weakening of their hearts,
the whispers in pain, the unison in prayer.
The slow fragile breaths silently eroding
and extinguished like wisps from a candle.
I hear the distant cries of children
who lost their fathers and mothers.
The anguish of fathers and mothers
losing their children in the rubbles.
The lamentations of men and women
losing their wives, their husbands,
their brothers and their sisters.
I hear them all within the sound of the water
trickling down over the polished slabs of stones.
I hear them while I listen in the reading,
of engraved names whose innocent fates
were like the powdery dusts in mid-air
frozen, suspended, undiminished in time.
I hear the grieving sighs. The silent tears.
The ashes of remembrance, the memory.
The extraordinary day when the world
will never forget the ground zero.
Flood
Posted in Current Affairs, Literature, Nature, Poetry, Politics, Social Commentary, Society, tagged above, afloat, ants, away, bailout, bell, blab, body, breach, bring, capture, cards, carry, chew, clock, constant, corporate, days, deadlines, deep, detergents, doomsday, down, downsizing, drain, dreams, drown, enjoy, excitement, fade, figure, file, fill, filth, flood, flotsam, forgetting, glide, gossip, habit, hidden, hope, hours, how, hunger, keep, labor become, laundry, letter, levee, limbo, line, machine, minutes, miss, morning, mountain, myself, necessity, news, next, note, numbness, oblivion, out, overflow, overtime, paperwork, people, pick, pile, poem, poetry, press, punch, race, ranks, rat, resonance, rim, rinse, ritual, rolling, rush, sandbag, silence, smell, soak, soap, sound, spell, stains, straw, stream, suffering, tap, termination, thank, thin, think, tick, time, train, treatment, tub, wait, wash, water, way, weekend, whine, worry, yesterday on June 7, 2013| 4 Comments »
The hours tick like sound of punch cards
in this corporate machine treating
people like ants filed into ranks.
Mountain of paperwork piled up
into sandbags. Bring it on, breach
my levee and let me drown forgetting.
Labor becomes a habit. Of numbness
and enjoying the suffering.
Like the sound of water from the tap
during a morning ritual in oblivion-
silence resonates like a hidden bell.
I wait until it fills the tub overflowing
down the rim and the clock raced
to the minutes rushing for the train.
Like the way the thinning soap glides
my body and the necessity to wash
away yesterday’s worry-rat smell-
that doomsday spell. A thank you note
and the termination letter. The downsizing
and the news keep rolling off the press.
People pick up some gossips to chew
and I am excited to blab my hunger.
Like the constant whining of the weekend
laundry, hoping detergents rinse the stains
and filth of missed deadlines. And overtime.
And I got the time to soak away thinking
about the next line to a poem, capturing it
before it goes down the drain. In limbo.
And I hope to keep afloat above it
like a flotsam of dreams in a stream
carried away in the fading of days.
Figuring it out how to bailout myself
like a straw in deep water.
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