Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Ani Difranco -- WTC Poem
(just thought I'd share)
Yes, yes, yes, us people are just poems. We're 90% metaphor with a leanness of meaning approaching hyper distillation, and once upon a time we were moonshine rushing down the throat of a giraffe. Yes, rushing down the long hallway, despite what the PA announcement said. Yes, rushing down the long stairs with the whiskey of eternity fermented and distilled to eighteen minutes burning on our tongues, down our throats, down the hall, down the stairs in a building so tall that it will always be there.
Yes, it's part of a pair, there on the bow of Noah's Ark, the most prestigious couple just kicking back, parked against a perfectly blue sky on a morning beatific in its Indian Summer breeze, on the day that America fell to its knees after strutting around for a century without saying thank you or please.
And the shock was subsonic and the smoke was deafening, between the setup and the punch line because we were all on time for work that day.
We all boarded that plane for to fly, and then when the fires were raging we all climbed up on the window sill and then we all held hands and jumped into the sky.
Every borough looked up when it heard the first blast, and then every dumb action movie was summarily surpassed, and the exodus uptown by foot and motorcar looked more like war than anything I've seen so far.
Yes, it looked more like war than anything I've seen so far
So fierce and ingenious, a poetic specter so far gone that every jackass newscaster was struck dumb and stumbling over 'oh my god' and 'this is unbelievable' and on and on.
And i'll tell you what, while we're at it, you can keep the pentagon, you can keep the propaganda and each and every TV that's been trying to convince me to participate in some prep school punk's plan to perpetuate retribution.
Perpetuate retribution
Even as the blue toxic smoke of our lesson in retribution is still hanging in the air, and there's ash on our shoes, and there's ash in our hair, and there's a fine silt on every mantle from hell's kitchen to brooklyn, and the streets are full of stories, sudden twists and near misses and soon every open bar is crammed to the rafters with tales of narrowly averted disasters, and the whiskey is flowing like never before as all over the country folks just shake their heads, and pour.
So here's a toast to all the folks who live in Palestine, and Iraq, and El Salvador. Here's a toast to the folks living on the Pine Ridge Reservation with GI Joe still coming back for more. Here's a toast to all those nurses and doctors who daily provide women with a choice; who stand down a threat the size of Oklahoma City just to listen to a young woman's voice. Here's a toast to all the folks on death row right now; awaiting hot oil or guillotine; who are shackled there with dread and can only escape into their heads to find peace in the form of a dream.
'Cause take away our Playstations and we are a 3rd world nation, under the thumb of some blue blood royal son who bought the Oval Office in that phony election. While we're at it, let me state unequivocally, he is not President of Me, he is not President of me.
'Cause I, I am a poem heeding hyper distillation. I've got no room for a lie so verbose. I'm looking out over my whole human family and I'm raising my glass in a toast
Here's to our last drink of fossil fuels; let us vow to get off of this sauce, shoo away the swarms of commuter planes and find that train ticket we lost.
'Cause once upon a time the line followed the river, and peeked into all the backyards where the laundry was waving out on the line and the graffiti was teasing us from brick walls and bridges. We were rolling over ridges through valleys, under stars. I dream of touring like Duke Ellington in my own railroad car.
I dream of waiting on the big wooden benches in the grand station aglow with grace and then standing out on the platform and feeling the air on my face.
Give back the night its distant whistle. Give the darkness back its soul. Give the big oil companies the finger finally, and relearn how to rock and roll.
Yes, the lessons are all around us, and the truth is waiting there, so it's time to pick through the rubble clean the streets and clear the air.
Tell our government to pull its big dick out of the sand of someone else's desert and put it back in its pants, and quit the hypocritical chants of 'freedom forever.'
Cause when one lone phone rang in two thousand and one at ten after nine on nine one one, which is the number we all called when that lone phone rang right off the wall right off our desk.
And down the long hall, down the long stairs, in the building so tall that the whole world stopped just to watch it fall.
And while we're at it, remember the first time around, the bomb, the Ryder Truck, the Parking Garage, the Princess that didn't even feel pity? Remember joking around in our apartment on avenue d? "Can you imagine how many paper coffee cups would have to change their design, following a fantastical reversal of the new york skyline?" It was a joke of course. It was a joke at the time. It was just a few years ago, so let the record show that the FBI was all over that case. The plot was obvious and in everybody's face, and scoping the scene religiously. Was the CIA or is it KGB? Committing countless crimes against humanity with this kind of eventuality as its excuse for abuse after expensive abuse, and they didn't have a clue.
Look another window to see through, way up here on the 104th floor. Look another key, another door. 10% literal and 90% metaphor. 5000 some poems disguised as people on an almost too perfect day. They must be more than just poems in some asshole's passion play. So now it's your job and it's my job to make it that way; to make sure they didn't die in vain. Shhh... Listen baby; hear the train?"
.:dr0wningophelia:. 20:49 |
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