Tuesday, September 12, 2017

SIXTEEN YEARS AGO YESTERDAY



Meditation on a Tragic Anniversary


A radiant cloudless morning
air fresh and clear
sky the brightest blue
mood mellow
A lovely young day bright with promise ––

And then a gleaming silver shell appeared
mirroring beautifully the morning sunshine 
A Thing of Beauty –– but horribly out of place
like a spacecraft from an alien planet

Dipping crazily far too low upon the skyline
before anyone could feel the menace ––
it smashed directly into a gigantic upright construct ––
one of a pair ––

Twin monuments to Greed and Vain Ambition some were quick to say

But sudden violent death eradicated an entire investment firm
in one horrific instant –– 
dozens of bright young lives incinerated –– gone!

Before dazed onlookers could begin to understand what was happening
another silver shell acting as a missile 
crashed into the second of the giant pair.

Ugly buildings!  A hideous blot 
on the once-graceful Manhattan skyline.

“Ada Louise Huxtable might secretly rejoice at this,”
part of me thought wickedly, for I had always resented
the overbearing, outsized twins ––
Bounders! Interlopers ! Invaders!

But before that ruined day was halfway through
three-thousand innocents had been
burned alive, brains and eyeballs boiled 
skulls pulverized, skeletons crushed
between twisting, white hot girders
pelted with falling rubble midst the flames
caught, crippled, crumpled, smashed to bits ––
Smothered in collapsing stairwells and buried alive
in a torrent of red hot cinders and debris

In so many ways the scene must have mimicked the final hours
of the residents of Pompeii and Herculaneum


And then there were those hideous echoes 
of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire ––
Where so many jumped to their deaths
to escape being burned alive ––
In an instant smashed skulls, broken bones and bloody pulp 
were all that remained of their vibrant young lives.


And not so long ago in Benghazi –– to mark the anniversary 
of this Great Triumph of Barbarity over Civilization
our young, handsome, well-meaning, 
hopelessly naive, ambassador to Libya
was surrounded in his quarters, 
dragged out into the streets
beaten, sodomized and brutally murdered.

But what does any of this matter? What difference does it make?
Let’s just forget about it, and MOVE ON.
Might as well. 

We are privileged to live in interesting times.

Kyrie eleison!
Kyrie eleison!
Christe eleison!

~ FreeThinke 




12 comments:

  1. A sad day of national shame and official stupidity.

    That day saw many heroes sacrificing self for others. That and the memorialized dead are all that remain worthy of remembrance.

    Saudis attacked us, so Bush smoked cigars with Prince Bandar on the White House balcony and then attacked Saddam Hussein.

    We are in our 16th year of The Endless War in the Graveyard of Empires.

    Welcome to the New Normal.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As Iran continued to be one of our gravest threats.

      Yup... the above is surely spot on.

      Delete
    2. Point of clarification... Iran was never a grave threat. It still is not.

      Delete
    3. Iran is a grave threat, Les.

      You need to get out more.

      Delete
    4. We should learn to be grteful for the fools among us Silver. If nothing else they make those of us with brains look even better than we probably are.

      Like fat girls with buck teeth and acne who wear glasses make the decent looking girls appear lovelier by contrast.

      ];^}>

      Delete
    5. That's funny!

      It is a favorite leftwing trope that Iran is no threat (they are: they would destroy us if they had the power, and they would do it in a smart, subtle way)

      And it is counter-balanced by the rabid rightwing armchair generals who want to send somebody else's kids over there to take care of those damned Iranians.

      Political discourse has devolved into brainless stupidity.

      Delete
    6. Intelligence, like beauty is often depended on the beholder.

      We don't expect you'll understand, nor do we GIS if you don't.

      Delete
  2. "Welcome to the New Normal"?

    NO, The NEW Normal is American's being so damned worried about offending the AANIMALS who did that awful, disgusting thing to America 16 Years ago.


    ReplyDelete
  3. Right DD, I throughly agree with you. The new normal is seeing the lefties who no longer give rats behind about what happened on September the 11th. Even the Messiah wanted the change the day to “A Day of Service” rather than A Day to Remember! These days the leftwingers are more concerned about 150 year old statues . When the the Chicago political gangster was in the Whit House the entire country started to fall into the hands of the Terrorist Nations and no one seemed to give a damn. No one said a peep when he sold us out to the Iranians, or about that Little fat Boy in North Korea, or when he stabbed Israel in the back at the United Nations, or when we saw those pictures of our American sailors on their neens with their hands behind their backs. . Now that Donald trump is the president all of the sudden everything is a CRISIS!
    Why is it that NO ONE had ANY opposition to these statues before this year?.
    None of this was a hot button issue on a consistent basis until the past 8 months... why? Nothing in the world has changed! Only the Messiah is gone... Thank God! . Just another example of left wing hyperbole hysterics. . Why is it that now in 2017 all of a sudden there’s a war over slavery?
    Why does the Left ALWAYS have something new to bitch about

    ReplyDelete
  4. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  5. As far as I can tell, most people today don't care about those lost lives.

    I hate to be saying the above, but that's what I'm observing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The average American. AOW, has the attention span of a GNAT, and the soul of a SCALLOP.

      Delete

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