CHASTISED

In the wake of the WTC disaster

I wasn’t born yet
for the Kennedy thing but this morning
on the 69th Street Pier I saw the
smoke billow out from the World Trade Center
across the way but chalked it up to
being no big deal since I had just
written a poem about pollution.

I found out
I was wrong.

It hit me first
at work
when I heard the news that a plane came
hijacked from Boston to New York and I thought
of my brother, although he lived in Boston several lives
ago, I wanted to know he was ok but

nothing was ok. Nothing was alright and then
the lady’s voice on 1010 declared the second
tower came town and that didn’t hit me yet
until I heard Manhattan now has
a new skyline...

I thought of my
drawings I must redo as I
answered the e-mails from frantic friends
still in Michigan typing in all caps
PLEASE TELL ME YOU’RE OK and it
hit me again

on the ride home on my bike
since my boss -- and the Senate -- declared it time to close after
hearing -- six times -- this is a national emergency and he
offered to drive all of us home, me and my bike if I
took off the tire and I was
about to accept when he
locked the keys in his car so I pedaled -- cautiously --
through the dampered streets, past another guy
on a bike wearing a bright white surgical mask and
thought, since I smoke, if I did the same thing I would feel
like a hypocrite I feel

we have a glimpse
of WWIII never mind Archduke
Ferdinand the Third or the shot heard round the world I just heard
the radio bleed that the Arabs on the West Bank
are handing out candy, they are having a party, saying that
God is good there is death in America,
the garden-shaped wuss we could all blame Bush
and hummus and indigo things but I don’t know enough to jab
or point political fingers -- I only know enough
to know that
I am scared

and I only know enough to hope that the
slumbering oaf we call a country
stirs itself awake enough
to rear its massive head
in prayer.

-Ryn Gargulinski.09.11.01

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