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AlecBell — Free Fall
Published: 2010-01-11 18:52:48 +0000 UTC; Views: 499; Favourites: 11; Downloads: 7
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Description
This void is not eternal,more hiatus than infinity.
The obdurate ground
lies in wait. Its dead-reckoned
zero will mark his annihilation.
Is it true, as so many
of the dispossessed have claimed,
that the destruction of these
molten towers is the blossoming
of hubris? The plummeting figure
will never know the forces that have
wrought his destruction.
Already
lenses have detected his descent.
The amplifying eyes of the photographic
press corps will provide him with
a lasting witness. Still he will
have died without a name, without
remains detectable enough for ritual.
Quotidian habit had put him
in danger. Men with fanatic, calculating eyes
made plans to create their funeral pyre
in the city's business heart.
Their murderous immolation they believed
would throw wide the gates of paradise.
They would be ecstatically received.
Not so for the nameless man who
plunged (by accident or design,
who can tell?) to meet his death
far below the cacophony and flame.
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Comments: 26
Horrible indeed. I feel the need to work on such subjects, to speak up, I suppose
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That's good - I think people should remember that it happened and honor those who lost their lives that day. I still struggle to believe that that actually happened, sometimes - an attack like that right over American soil, using a passenger flight - I never would have believed that something like that could even be possible, before that happened!
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I was following the news that afternoon, as were my colleagues, on our office computers.
Like so many other people we had difficulty grasping the events even as they unfolded (In my poem Ground Zero, I try to deal with the global dimension of this terrible event, that countless millions of people became impotent spectators.
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Watching the horrific events unfold, but unable to do anything to help, from so far away. It was unbelievable. Just ... you'd never think something like that would happen on such a massive scale of destruction and loss of life in peace time in modern times in America. Crazy.
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Very nice poem. It is excellent to see poetry that is socio-political and mature.
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Thank you.
I've never been able to keep "the real world" out of my poems.
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The sensation of falling is deeply implanted among our atavistic fears, I think.
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We build funparks full of roller coasters around that fear!
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Thanks a lot, Shane.
One of many interesting things about poetry is the way that words alway reach beyond the meaning you intended for them
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the opening line really grabbed me. in fact, the entire opening stanza is my favorite bit of the poem.
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- the falling man personalizes the 3000 death
tragedy in an anonomous impersonal way. he
gives a visual direction to the ultimate
destination of the nineteen suicidal "martyrs",
not heavenward, but if anything, the diametric
opposite - in essense a statement of destruction,
not what the religious hierarchy desire for
a mental image of their beliefs, hey, Alec?
- in serving their faith, they inadvertantly
and selfishly mock it. you said this so well.
- pip
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The falling man was the detail I couldn't erase, for all the reasons you have stated. He stands in his anonimity for all the victims of that foul atrocity.
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The plummeting figure
will never know the forces that have
wrought his destruction.
brilliant, sir!
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I bet this would stir up memories of the Trade Center ...incident is not nearly strong enough.
Tragedy would be far more fitting.
This should stir up memories of the Trade Center tragedy (among others) for just about anyone.
Good work, Alec
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Thank you charrlie.
There are some poems that demand that I write them. This was one.
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