Reflections Of Those Sad Memories Following 9/11
During the days, throughout the following weeks of the attack on the World Trade Center, sadly better known today as 9/11. Like most of the rest of America I was numb, not simply daze, but stun!
However, unlike most of America, my job consisted of taking care and caring with a severely mentally ill population, not in a hospital, rather out in the community, besides I had three young, loving, sweet, pain in the neck, teen-agers to finish raise, protect and to remain strong for, now more than ever.
Hence I followed the Paul Robeson approach, “an artist must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery. I have made my choice, I had no alternatives!” So I rolled up my sleeves and concentrated on the task at hand… my safety and my overall sanity. I stepped away from my sorrows, to look down from above, in search of an alternative and creative therapy, to realize it already existed within. I wrote every single day, and every passing minute I gotten a chance to write. I wrote before going to work, and I composed music late at night on my way back home after work.
Prior to such, I hated using headphones to compose, although late at night, I had no other choice. Such became my only escape… my getaway from all that was negative that going on the outside, and by the end of that year, I had accumulated another 250 poems, and had enough original music material to produce the album Flight of The Phoenix, and publish another book of poetry, Tears of Joy Peace and Harmony While the Fire Burns Within.
Although the musical reflections doesn’t deal with any pain and destruction, rather with love, hope and gratitude. Since I was not only grateful, but bound and determined to press on with my education, succeed and move on forward and grow spiritually. Within the pages of Poetic Dance Across The World, as a reader, you’ll also see those changes from despair and hopelessness, to anger, bitterness, and frustration turned to romance, hope and laughter, into lyrical music and songs.
The following poem is a meditation, upon that which today I ponder. As I sit, reflect and look back at that possible future business meeting that was supposed to take place inside the restaurant atop the WTC, called Windows To The World. Though I’d never been there, this is how deeply saddened, thus survival’s guilt ridden I was. Although my anger, frustration and shared disappointment was endless. Sadly, I later learned that many hardworking, innocent immigrant brothers and sisters, many of whom were my Honduran ‘paisanos,’ worked and died there on that day. The following is dedicated to them.
My Windows To The World
A the top of the World Trade Center
I once thought I’d seen my shadow shining in the Windows to the World
Such served as a perfect view to illuminate my dreams…
A testament to ingenuity… perhaps someday a symbol to our greatness and pride
On a clear September morning
Suddenly you’ve shattered our dreams
Our hopes you’ve trampled and broken
our way of living and shed my style
What gave you the right to bring down
such masterpiece of art and engineering
Shattering so many dreams among the rubble
of concrete pillars and crumpled steel
The human flesh of all innocent victims
ignited by your incendiary wishes
and devilish thoughts
were there mercenary pleasures?
Could you still call yourself upon your God?
Hatred, sorrows and confusions
tumbled down terror from our skies
thus now replaced our rain
as teardrops from the many
did you find pleasures in our pain?
Perhaps though not blood but rather pure hate
that rages through your infectious veins
My wish perhaps that I could’ve called you a man!
Oh you castrated, impotent bastards…
whom hides in the shadows and crawls throughout the night
alike a pack of limping savaged beasts.
What righted you to turn our daydreaming into nightmares, before our very eyes?
to leave us defenselessly standing in somber like zombies to mourn our loss
But you failed to brake my courage my spirit
as I’d again raise to chase the shadows of my dreams
thus reflect among the broken pieces still laying in liter upon my windows to the world.
