9/11: 20 years
planes like bombs blasted into buildings
in the middle of skies
and crumbled them down
lost lives
lost dreams
lost securities
i stood in a library lobby
i watched
feet frozen to the floor
that sad 9th month
11th day
I cried endlessly
thinking “all is lost”
planes like bombs blasted buildings
bombs that broke us
bombs that bonded us
for a while
for realizations
of brittle security
eventually break
common ties
recall empathy
call forth insanity
bring out anger or worse
apathy
over and over
throughout history
we are continually
watching boats, planes, storms, floods,diseases, institutions
These curious instruments
dressed like bombs blasting into
buildings, nations, people, families, hearts
incinerating, crushing, marginalizing, colonizing
enslaving, terrorizing, irreverently ruling
in our lands, in all lands
pulling us in, tearing us apart
leaving memory of tragedy
in one generation
the trauma of the tragedy
in the next
collective traumatic memory
That we carry for generations
to come
left in people who
create people who do not know
how to choose the bonding
over the brittleness and the bitterness
who don’t know
how to make new love
out of old loss
how to mitigate
how stop
the cycles
of people like bombs
blasting into people
i still see this today
feet frozen to the floor
this 9th month
this 11th day
20 years since planes like bombs
blasted into my head, bonded
into my head
we pulled together
we pulled apart
cracked clay pots
in my 54 years of living
my mind still holding so much
collective traumatic memory
waiting and wanting to be acknowledged
to be repurposed
to be reverently built into
a sky of hope
into a world of change

