Current events

This poem was published in the original Podium on Sep 26, 2001, with the tag line "Further poetic observations of New York City as the war on terror rages on."

by Anonymous-AL (Name removed by request of the author)

incompleted mourning supersaturated deaths
vigils by the living awaiting definitions of breath
posters of her father his wife and their best friend
sentries of candle sticks burned to their ends

She was in the height of her life and He was father of five
They received death's salute unimagined by our minds
stolen from a Lover erased from a Son's life
killing a graduation, a yet to be wife

You've got to move on ya know get on with being alive
do your hellos, chats and coffees, dining, taxi rides
see the dow betray you wave your flag proudly by
enact daily democracy our most civilized disguise

Watch the burning of old glory in islamabad
listen to the deafening rhetoric of defunct dialog
get your gas masks ready
adorn masks of supremacy
see freedoms stutter
and refugees flee

The author s a doctor living and working in New York city.

Poem

This poem was published in the original Podium magazine on Sep 23, 2001, with the tag line, "A Doctor/poet comments on New York in the wake of September 11."

by Anonymous-AL (Name removed by request of the author)

i haven't cried in a long time
until i saw life undermined
by soaring jets of hijacked lives
innocence trapped by bloody knives

these daggers to democracy
delivered death immediately
to future friends i cannot meet
to families drowning in defeat

numb to the contents of these days
drunk on nauseating dismay
i sit here wonder wander why
among the smokey manhattan sky

america's borders battered / reviled
her way of life now revised
a million doubts and tears she doth possess
but here me now she cannot rest

watch out for the shadows of the new terror
as it lurks to spit out more bloody horrors
marking each human life inherently unsafe
vigilance i know must not wait

The author is a doctor living in Manhattan. This poem was an email sent to his sister on the day after the terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center.