Wounds

Remembering 9/11

Joni Mitchell’s throaty version of Yeats’
“Second Coming” floats up from the glass
Still Hudson River over Nyack’s antique houses
To the hospital which Nurse Peggy said
The 9/11 hijackers used as compass and tool
As they picked their way down our bright
September morning song
To murder Manhattan.

“Those bastards must have figured
They could walk on water,” she said
Distracted by television chatter
Of bombings in France
Hiroshima a lifetime ago
And the forgotten stories about
American Marines killed
Riding in amphibious vehicles
In Western Iraq.

“What were they thinking,” she asked
While providing no referent
“Doing such crazy things”
As she inserted an I-V
In my hospital roommate
Taking me back to Johnny Cash’s
Dying lament about
His empire of dirt:
“I will make you hurt.”

My roommate has a gangrenous
Leg that stinks up the place.
Brian calls every hour
Or so for his morphine lollipop
That kills the pain
And loosens his tongue.
The Iraq War is still in the room
In his drug-fueled delusions
Then Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia
And a very Red China.
In and out of consciousness
Brian wants to kills them all
Even though he will walk
With a limp, dragging
His stump through the bone
Yard of his patriotic cheers
Death barely out of reach.

Midnight in the kingdom
Of wounds. A frail woman
Passing a kidney stone
Curses all the gods
Living and dead.
Joni Mitchell takes the poem
High past Yeats’ rough beast
And nightmare incantation
Through the improvised scat
Jangle we heard in Vietnam
Capturing the drumbeat of
National pain, now stirring
Again in the singer’s land
That wants too much
That wants too badly
Piling up domestic icons
Sandbagging the truth
Worshipping the suburban calf
In a tethered cul-de-sac.

The codeine tells the music
Stop at the clean as beak
American Dream, our literal
Fig-tree fantasy sure as Noah’s Ark
Parading as science at the National Zoo.
We put St. John’s apocalyptic stew out
There in Iraq and Iran and
On the dark-skinned, Jesus
Toned figures of our dreams.
When we open the Seven Seals,
Scales fall from our eyes
And we see the Seven Plagues
Everywhere, strife and pestilence
From mountain to molehill
The wrath of Zeus
Hot arrows of indignation
Filling the compass floor
Sparing the certain righteous and elect
Immune from friendly fire even a
Bible-thumping Johnny Cash
Wearing his crown of thorns knew
Detonates from within.