Looking Up
(Looming over September)

I don't like helicopters—
They mean hovering over death.
They indicate news flash,
Emergency, everyone alert!
When I see them lingering
I tray hard to look away,
Knowing their looming
is Tragedy waiting to happen
this very morning, or certainly
by the end of this doomed day.
Their prescient subside
has me remembering—
what never to forget.
With their omniscient whirl
I continue looking up
resigning, with morbid regret.

Tunnelworm: Fear's Regeneration

Since that morning when we lost
all innocence, a nation under threat
the acknowledgement of our frailty,
my greatest fear has been that I
am in denial: death is near.
In my commute I close my eyes
for a moment when we enter underground,
there in silent gloom I pretend
there is room—to escape;
to leave before the water breaks,
and makes the walls cave in,
before the ball of fire rips
through the bus and leaves all of us
unified as one charred remain.

The light of dusk awaiting replies,
"No not this time."
Through the summer, through the haze,
The stifling heat chases the remembering
pain away. But here at eh end of August
the cold settles in, as well as the memory
of when our shells were too thin.

If tomorrow when I rise no alternative
to work presents itself, again
I'll take my keys off the shelf
and wait, the long wait while
before we go in the tunnel again.
And if then it should be this time
when a demented fundamentalist mind
should succeed, I only ask not to asphyxiate,
nor slowly burn, nor uncontrollably bleed—
So, devil take my life as quick as I have lived
And to you my soul I shall give indeed.

Sir, raging, bearded, turbaned
man, who with your evil plan,
cast down this great country—
I beseech you, whether you breath
as savior or harbinger of death,
tell me—why must you leave
so many so mournfully bereft? Why?
(Please tell me why).

hinc illae lacrimae.
hence these tears.

~ terence, andria