09-11-2013, 03:56 AM
SURVIVOR
I stumbled along those streets,
the ones I had known all my life,
a powdered ghost
deafened by silence.
No longer safe, alive, happy,
my world was reduced to panic, fear, dread,
mouth, filled with gritty burnt flesh,
eyes, unable to not see what was before them.
My heart, racing to escape my chest,
And my legs, unable to support, much less carry
I dropped the bag I had, never to reclaim it,
I lost the life I had, gone forever within a few short minutes.
No matter how hard I look,
I cannot find the me that I was before.
A uniform tried to comfort me, took me aside,
sat me on the curb, a child at a parade.
I recall the feel of the Red Cross blanket, its weight
both comfort and burden.
Tears scaled down my face
leaving trails in the kabuki death mask.
My eyes drew skyward, looking for the next plane.
The one that would drop a bomb,
the one that would kill us all.
Unsure of how I felt when it never came;
numb agony,
raging fear,
glad to be in one piece,
sick at the burnt bologna smell in the air.
The phone on my hip chirped -
a panicked bird in a leather cage.
On the ninth,
or ninetieth time,
I answered,
to hear that voice
of the one I loved.
I was alive.
I stumbled along those streets,
the ones I had known all my life,
a powdered ghost
deafened by silence.
No longer safe, alive, happy,
my world was reduced to panic, fear, dread,
mouth, filled with gritty burnt flesh,
eyes, unable to not see what was before them.
My heart, racing to escape my chest,
And my legs, unable to support, much less carry
I dropped the bag I had, never to reclaim it,
I lost the life I had, gone forever within a few short minutes.
No matter how hard I look,
I cannot find the me that I was before.
A uniform tried to comfort me, took me aside,
sat me on the curb, a child at a parade.
I recall the feel of the Red Cross blanket, its weight
both comfort and burden.
Tears scaled down my face
leaving trails in the kabuki death mask.
My eyes drew skyward, looking for the next plane.
The one that would drop a bomb,
the one that would kill us all.
Unsure of how I felt when it never came;
numb agony,
raging fear,
glad to be in one piece,
sick at the burnt bologna smell in the air.
The phone on my hip chirped -
a panicked bird in a leather cage.
On the ninth,
or ninetieth time,
I answered,
to hear that voice
of the one I loved.
I was alive.
"In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite." - Paul Dirac (1902 - 1984)