Standing there in that brilliant blue
day of the collapsing giant towers
thinking they won’t use this as an
excuse to do something really stupid

And then five days later in the train
going South to visit the little family
who called us that very awful morning
to say “do you know what’s going on?”

The smoke still rising black from whence
the twin towers should have once stood
the footprint of our maxi-modern hubris
where no one imagined the consequence

And here we are two whole full decades
later, ever so later but never ever the past
we’re only now finally beginning to learn
something about what actually did happen

Oh, the Current Age electric magic power
to dominate this dueling dance of narratives
where the more they totally full suppress
the more at all other levels we still express

The very bated breath bursts out panting
for some honestly legitimate explanation
for what can cannot ever be truly tolerated
the final acceptance of this Cult of Death.

 

James Van Looy has been a fixture in Boston’s poetry venues since the 1970s. He is a member of Cosmic Spelunker Theater and has run poetry workshops for Boston area homeless people at Pine Street Inn and St. Francis House since 1992. Van Looy leads the Labyrinth Creative Movement Workshop, which his Labyrinth titled poems are based on. His work appears weekly in Oddball Magazine.