What Others Feel

The blog world is filled with 9/11 posts today and I can't say it any better than that which is out there.  Here are selections from or links to a few memorable posts. 

I begin with Brian Miller, an incredible poet who has been honing his remarkable skill in the posts he  bravely allows us to read.    

 

Poetics: we bought the lie (9/11)

we bought the lie

at a young age, when thoughts were innocent
and heroes wore spandex, good always finds
a way, to win, heroes never die

and then they killed Superman

it was my freshman year of college, on the front
page of USA Today, cape flapping in the wind
where the body lay of an icon, of truth, justice
and the american way

we bought the lie

because it was not long before they brought
him back like some sunday morning resurrection
and it became cliche' to die, and heroes died
as a way to the next big thing, then came back
just to sell comic books, some sick marketing
tool, and we believed heroes can never die

we bought the lie

and then it happened, men and women providing
for a family, some trying to earn an honest days wage,
just living ordinary every day lives or police, firemen
or military trying to save them, were taken away, in
a concrete steel mass grave

and that is when we knew the lie

a daughter leapt from on high holding a friends hands,
preschoolers were led through debris by a mother,
a brother raced up, the opposite way doing his duty
a father fought for control of a plane, a middle eastern
man sat in a taxi knowing you will never look at him the same

we bought the lie

and became angry americans, searching for weapons
of mass destruction, happy to hit them back like some
school yard brawl, singing anthems to our pain as we
raised the torn & battered flag

we bought the lie

heroes die, and don't come home or back to life,
they only live on in how we live our lives

there has to be a better way,
there has to be a better way.



"The Bitchy Waiter" is a favorite, funny blog I enjoy.  He's a Manhattan waiter whose anecdotes of customers, co-workers & bosses are always a scream.  His memory of 9/11 is anything but.


Reya lives in D.C.  Her shared memory is a short one, ending in a boom as the plane hits the Pentagon.


Ruth is another talented poet, like Brian.  She chose to remember obliquely, referencing an image rather than re-imagining the details of the day in her poem below.

September morning

He’s tall as a tower, my son — graceful
in the resilient way

of bamboo, lithely connected
at joints and knuckles.

With guitar he eases out
a tune’s vulnerabilities, bending

fingers and strings as if not
bending at all, as if he were himself

the curve of wind on
a leaf ribbon,

tapping dew-riffs out of air.
Wind is the maestro,

we the geniuses who play
our one sublime

sound — tapering,
sometimes stuttering, ruffled

into harmonics, being blown
with the rest into a song untouchable.

ad broad, a career agency copywriter, now head of her own company in NYC, writes of the history of the towers and why they were built and where.

the field negro is a deeply political blog focused on the black experience and the irony of our political times.  He is a Philadelphia lawyer.  He was at a conference on 9/11 not far from the Shanksville, Pa. crash of United flight 93.

The Urban Politico is a new blog I'm reading and really like.  They discuss "politics and current events from the perspective of the urban community".  They have 6 contributors.  It's well written, varied and interesting.
Each takes a turn to remember where they were and what they were doing on 9/11/01.