Hi guys! Sorry I haven't been on this as much lately. Anyways, this is a poem I wrote in school to commereate 9/11, which can be a kind of sensitive topic. This is also a poem written from a fire fighter's POV, so... well, I dunno, why I felt like I needed to tell you that, actually. I guess enjoy?? It's kinda sad..... :,( I guess that makes sense, though, with the whole 'about 9/11' thing.

Anyways, bye for now!!

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The Towers of Smoke

Sometimes, when the journalists come, they ask questions--

Questions like

How did you feel?

What did you think?

Who did you lose?

What do you remember?

That's always the hardest

I remember the sun,

Breaking through the clouds,

Lighting up the morning,

Sending golden rays through the rows of office buildings,

Like an army of giants' legs,

Forever marching to the sea

I remember the smoke,

Sharp and bitter,

Not at all like a campfire,

The first sign of something wrong

I remember the panic,

People running through the streets,

Fighting for escape

I remember a child's cry of pain,

As a skinned knee was born,

Of fire and mobs of frenzied animals

Then came the call,

The odd sense of terror-filled courage,

The surreal sight of a hole in the building,

Where dozens of cubicle workers should be

After that was the climb,

Hours of sweat and pain,

Of scratchy throats and screaming GO

Five floors, the smoke too thick to see through

Ten, twenty floors now, hundreds of people gone

By thirty I could see the flames

By thirty-seven, I saw the first raindrop

A human--I didn't know his name

I didn't know what coffee he drank,

What size his shoes were

I didn't know if he was married

He didn’t see me,

But I watched as he jumped,

Broken glass hanging in the air

As time seemed to slow,

Fire and sun joining together

I didn’t see any of the others, but

I know I saw him,

The First Jumper

A speck of humanity

Falling, falling, falling

But I couldn’t seem to move, even as

The raindrop burst on the pavement below

Moments before the thunderstorm,

Bodies colliding

With the unforgiving earth

I remember looking down,

After the first jumper

Thousands in the streets

Like ants, after their hill was destroyed,

Streaming from the towering buildings,

Cowering in the shadows,

Hiding from cruel reality

I remember continuing, fighting,

Forcing my way further and further up,

But turning back,

Compelled by the crackle of the radio

It could fit in the palm of my hand

But it saved my life

I passed a group,

On my way down

I couldn’t tell you when,

There were no windows, nowhere to look,

No horizon to offer hope,

In that stairwell brimming with death

I felt a tremendous shudder

We all felt sure then, I am certain,

That Earth herself was shaking,

Her tears mourning the dead

We did the best we could,

In this dark, hollow place

Then I was on the ground

They told me of the other tower,

Dissolved into ash and smoke,

Killings hundreds

When I was already blocks away,

I felt another BOOM,

And turned, only to see a gray cloud

Swallow the city

The puff of a giant’s breath

Into already-cool September air,

And the least thing I saw

Was a shadow

Before it swallowed me, too

Later, I found out what happened

How the North Tower was hit,

and then the South Tower

How so many died, trapped, caged, panicked

How so many more died trying to save them

How human beings did this

That’s the worst part, for me

That someone with a soul did this,

Someone who could smell the smoke, hear the screams

Someone like me

They call themselves, “Kamikaze”

I call them monsters

Who else could do this?

They say it was religious,

But they weren’t there

They didn’t smell the smoke, or see that first raindrop

They didn’t hear the screams, taste the ash

They didn’t survive so much death

Sometimes, they come

So I answer their questions

But when they ask what happened,

I say I don’t know, don’t remember

That it’s blocked out

Because they don’t really want to hear

And because when I talk about it,

The ghosts re-appear

The phantom screams,

The dim faces,

And I have to see all of those beings

Crushed again beneath a giant’s legs