we saw the world end
in a ball of fire
two balls of fire
& puffs of dust
outrunning gravity
blowing off
the laws of physics
2 planes took out 3 towers
it was a miracle it meant
anything can happen
in reality
it was the Middle Ages
mind-bending demons & wonders
mounting a comeback
the Enlightenment
was shockt it decayed
into too many words
with too little to say
brain waves heart rhythms
emanations of the flesh
mirrors of the soul
warped that day
ashen darkness paling away
like the great wave of Hokusai,
the vast horde of its waters
storming up & over
the little fishermen
in their little boats
Mount Fuji shines
in distance
white & serene
. . . we woke
to fire & smoke
small bodies on TV
holding hands
walking out of windows
buildings
give up their ghosts
over & over
on TV after TV
spewing toxic dust
haunting down the day
of panicked faces, eyes
running half looking back
at the science fiction
choking their streets . . .
Hokusai’s fishermen cling
to the gunnels
of their slender boats
the Great Wave
the menace
& beauty of it
hanging over them
is as perfect & as still
in its blackness & blueness
as Fuji in the brilliance
of its canopy of snow
it is what it is
here nothing is
we have learned to read miracles
as the signs of a conspiracy
we have managed to live
with murder & torture
in the name of a homeland
we have never lived in
trapped in a web
of blood-&-soil
fear like a filthy sack
pulled down over our heads–
we will never now not see
human beings rendered
walking on air, as though
treading the heaviness of water
feeling for the bottom
for all to see
the dignity the immensity
of their death, & of their littleness
against the spectacle
of the New American Century
where the world we knew ended
—floor by screaming floor—
in the first murders of the terror war
—from Oceania 2008