Note—Re-posting an
almost annual blog post.
There
is no escaping it. A scab
is pulled off a barely healed wound. Opportunists
and con men scramble to once again jump to wrong conclusions, scapegoat strawmen, and bend the occasion to serve their ambitions and blood lust.
I dread it every year. But it will not leave me or, I suspect, any
of us alone.
But
as horrible as those images etched
indelibly in my mind are, is it wrong to say that I miss the days just
after? Remember? For a little while Americans loved each other, found comfort in each other’s arms.
Divisions melted. We were united
by grief, and yes, even some righteous
anger. Even the world mourned for us. Some
of us even dared hope that the sense
of oneness, community, and solidarity
could change us. Maybe even last.
Of
course, it didn’t. Weeks went by and we
went charging off in different directions—drumming up wars on people who had
nothing to do with the attack, cooking up wild conspiracy theories that confirmed our
own personal demons and loathing’s, scapegoating the convenient and the weak,
attacking the patriotism of anyone
who did not wear a flag pin 24 hours
a day.
And
now, multiple wars later, a Depression, the election of a Black
President then his replacement with a malignant narcissist and common
charlatan, the ascent of a kind
of political madness, the rise of entitled oligarchy, immigration panic and the rise
of fascist White nationalism Americans
hate each other. Really hate.
Can’t stand to talk with each other, be in the same room, breathe the
same air. Rage is the order of the day. White
men strut through malls and fast food emporiums with military style weapons slung over their
shoulder daring anyone to look cross
eyed at them and in their heart of hearts hoping that someone will challenge
them. Looking for any spark to set off a Civil War.
22 years later America is shattered and American despise each other.
Black kids who look like they
could be trouble are pumped full of holes with monotonous
regularity. Half-starved immigrant
children are torn from their parents, caged,
and brutalized.
In some churches, mosques,
and temples hate thy neighbor is the daily message.
We are sliced and diced apart every which way—by race, language, religion, politics, age, gender, and who we choose to love.
The
once revered first responder heroes of
9/11 have been transformed into greedy
union thugs by politicians. Police departments have been transformed
from serve and protect into little armies to quash
the slightest suggestion of unrest or dissent.
Women and their health have become more than ever political plaything, and the objects of Great Lie campaigns worthy of anything by Goebbels. Transgender humans have become prey righteous hunters.
And
guns still don’t kill people—the
increasing mounds of bodies are felled by some kind of mysterious magic.
So
much for my rant.
Looking
back, I have grappled with 9/11 in my poetry
more than any other single subject.
And how that poetry evolved speaks to what has happened to us.
The
first one was written for a one year anniversary program and was included
in my collection We Build Temples in the Heart in 2004.
Photos of the dead and missing in New York posted on a makeshift memorial wall.
The Dead of 9/11 Leave a Message on George
W’s Voice Mail
The
Dead cry out—
It
is not lonely here!
They come by the scores
and by the thousands
every day,
as they have always
come,
each arrival here
a wrenching loss below.
They come as they have always come,
each death the
completion of a journey,
the closing of a hoop of
life.
And we welcome each of them.
But
we are not lonely here.
We do not wander silent corridors
our footsteps echoing,
yearning for a voice.
We are not lonely
for we are the Dead
and we are everywhere
united in that last
breath
and in eternity.
But
You—
You
make haste to fill the unfillable,
to send us more,
many more,
out of their own time
as we were out of ours,
yanked here in violence and hatred.
Let
them be.
They
will come in their own time.
We
who know death
do not cry out for revenge.
We
are not lonely here.
—Patrick Murfin
"If I wore stars on a pointed hat."
In 2007 came one of those serendipitous coming together of calendar occasions
September
12, 2007
The
Day After 9/11—Ramadan and Rosh Hashanah
Wheels
turning within wheels—
an astrolabe,
Tycho’s observatory,
gears in some fantastic machine,
electrons—atoms—molecules,
moons—planets—stars—galaxies—universes.
Today,
just today—
Point A on Wheel X, spinning urgently,
comes to kiss Point B on Wheel Y,
rotating on its own good time,
for just a nano-second
having just brushed by
Point C on cog Z.
These
precise events will come again,
I suppose—
you do the math if you wish.
But
if I wore stars on a pointed hat,
I might conclude that there was something
beyond mere physics at work here.
Call
it an omen, if you wish,
or the flat hand of something Greater
slapping us upside our
merely mortal heads
and scolding us—
“Spin as you will,
you spin not alone.”
—Patrick Murfin
The cloud of ash envelops Manhattan.
On the tenth anniversary I was moved by reading that the dust from the Twin Towers was still orbiting the stratosphere and slowly, year by year,
falling to earth.
Ashes to Ashes, Dust to
Dust
September 9, 2011, Crystal Lake, Illinois
The ash and dust, they
say,
rose as high as the
skirts
of the ionosphere.
Prevailing winds pushed
it
across oceans and around the world.
Most has sifted by now
to the earth.
Some orbits still,
La Moneda, the Presidential Palace in Santiago, under attack during the
U.S. sponsored Chilean coup on 9/11 1973. In the wake of the coup
thousands were killed or disappeared.
Ten years ago, I recalled that 9/11
was etched in the memories of Chileans as
the date of their own national catastrophe—the
1973 coup
d’état that
overthrew the democratically elected government
of Salvador Allende and ushered in a
brutal dictatorship. The United
States government was more than just complicit in that.
Two Anniversaries
September
11, 2013
I’ll
ante my 3,000 vaporized on a crystal morning.
You’ll
see me your 3,000 homeless ghosts.
I’ll
give you my crumbling Towers and billowing ash.
You
will call with the bombed rubble of La Moneda .
I’ll
throw in a stack of terrorists with beards and turbans.
You’ll
count out freckled faces, crew cuts, and black fedoras.
Let’s
show our cards and see who loses.
—Patrick Murfin
