Overread at the Counter: Poem for 9-11 and Orange Caligula

 What Once Was Music Is Now the Crashing of Towers

What once was music is now the crashing of towers,
Tumultuous tumbling down to bury the bodies
Of people known, and unknown, and no longer known,

And every breath we draw is the drawing of ashes
Of the trees that once gave us air, now dying
In the flames of our iniquity, our perdition

Now takes our tears and rises the oceans,
Until the waves overtake us, and we drown;

All this is nonsense, insensate.  The music
That once was our love is now merely the 
Clanging of cymbals, the clanging of a madman

Who laughs at us, telling us that our deaths,
In the rubble, in the fire, in the depths of the oceans,
All these deaths 
Is simply is
What it is.



MR
2020-0911