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The Pentagon 9-11 Memorial
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The Hole in The Walls
The hole in the walls
Is slowly being filled,
All the rubble and body parts
Have carefully been stowed away;
Plywood covers the empty corridors,
The rubbish and sacred debris
Removed from the offices,
The mold beaten back,
Victory reclaimed,
Life continuing day to day.
Inside, across from ground zero,
The building feels different:
Everyone trying to ignore
The rumble and smoke
That lurks deep in our souls.
Lisa Jain Thompson
December 2001 |
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| written November last when I decided to do this issue of the StarPoet Newsletter |
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A Poet, Ten Years After |
Why did you bring these daggers from the place?
-- MacBeth, Act II, Scene II, line 61
Ten years ago, a decade passed,
On a bright and sunny day,
Someone flew a jet airliner
Into the Pentagon bay;
No one knows, no one cares,
Who lived, who died, who survived.
The clouds were white,
The sky was quite blue,
The burning black jet fuel
Curled through the hallways
In dark rolling waves tasting
Of gasoline, flesh, and death.
Our lungs filled with our friends,
Bonded forever in that instant
When time and life come full stop
To sort the living from the dead,
That fleeting moment we cannot
Leave or free our broken sleep.
Their last, silent screams fill our darkness,
A shrieking fireball that stalks our dreams,
Disrupting both night and innocent memory,
Shattering our careful, battle hardened windows
As it mocks the ribbons and well intentioned medals
We find ourselves so splendidly bestowed.
The building groaned beneath our feet
As the world outside our sandstone walls
Quickly died and began to be reborn, we were
Collected from the smolder, ash, and rubble,
Gathered box by box, finger and bone,
Identified by DNA and respectfully labeled.
The Pentagon burned throughout the night,
Visible from my high apartment window,
Friends called, emailed me, checked on my safety,
While I watched the country slowly rise,
Visited my three children, the cats, and my ex,
Letting them make dinner while I sat.
Late that night, the Army contacted me,
Confirming that I survived to make it home,
Told me to wait until they called again
To identify where I would now be working
Until our exploded work spaces could be rebuilt
And the Pentagon made safe again for mankind.
The news and television played incessantly,
Looping the plane crashes in the background,
Asking rescue workers if they'd found anything;
The American flag hung beside the gaping hole
Just over from the window from where I stood
Before the 757 crossed the helicopter pad.
Two weeks later perhaps --the time is blurred --
We gathered outside the Pentagon to give honor
To the ones who had died in the airplane and those
Who did not make it out of our cubicles and offices:
All of us flinched when a jet took off from National,
Our bodies trembling at what we were trying to forget.
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| — Lisa Jain Thompson (September 11, 2011) |
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Why I Am Alive
This is what saved us,
Not god, not planning ahead:
The age of the building
And the fondness of the universe for one last joke.
When the plane exploded,
Sending a fireball through the building,
The concussion shattered the windows in the original Pentagon.
The reinforced glass held firm in the renovation,
Sending the flames back down the least resistance
As they sought out oxygen through the broken openings.
If those old windows had held,
The flames would have devoured us all.
But they didn't, the fire was sucked away,
And I remained to tell our tale.
Lisa Jain Thompson
November 2001
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from December knowing what lay before us
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Winter Comes
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The trees are dead, winter comes,
The buildings will be refinished in time
For early fall and the anniversary
I have no intentions of attending.
It is easier to look back inside
My carefully gated memories
Than participate in remembrances
Run by those who were not there. |
| Lisa Jain Thompson (September 11, 2011) |
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| the memory is a vivid as I let it be. |
The Whisper of Voices
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There are days I remember
How close I was to the entry point,
How a turn of the rudder,
A drift in the wind,
A slightly different skid
When the wheels touched cement,
And I would be dead, not them:
That was the way things went down,
I live and they do not.
Any and all of our names
Could be inscribed on marble,
Any one of us could be sitting here
Hearing the other's name read out,
Life works like that.
I would have willingly given my life
If that would have saved them,
But that choice was taken from us
And I remained alive to remember them.
God bless us all and one, arm in arm,
Eleven September Two Thousand and One. |
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| — Lisa Jain Thompson (September 11, 2011) |
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Brave Americans
So we are heroes because we forgot to duck,
Brave Americans not bureaucrats
Because it is expedient for the politicians to call us so.
I do not feel like a hero, I doubt anyone one else does.
(Beware all those who proclaim themselves a hero's mantle.)
We did what we had to do, some died, some didn't,
None of it was our own choosing, only our freely willed desire
To help one another when the walls started falling.
Our humanity requires it. It's nothing special.
Fathers, Mothers, Brothers, Sisters, Strangers and Friends:
We separate ourselves from the Universe
By believing each life should be protected, each one of us unique.
Each of us cries out at birth, lives our spans, and dies to be no more.
Still we go on, we must, our primate fingers clasped hand to hand,
Sure of our humanity and the chance we might make
Something of this after all.
Lisa Jain Thompson
December 2001 |
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| I am glad that I am alive, even knowing that there is no particular reason that I live and my friends do not. I cannot dwell on it and survive. |
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A Building Like Any Other |
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It's only a building, after all,
And there was twenty some thousand of us
Inside the walls that September morning,
A bright, late summer day, the kind
You treasure after a long, humid August.
The trees were still bright green,
Roses were blooming
And a few late tomatoes
Were still growing and ripening;
Many of us were still outside
In the center courtyard:
By lunch time the benches
Would have been filled
And the smell of burgers and fries
Flooded the warm dry air.
None of that would happen,
None of us would eat out there
Until sometime the next spring
When the battle damage was
No longer visible,
When the smell of exploding jet fuel
And the stench of burnt flesh
Was safely walled away in deep memory,
When we could look once more at the walls
And not think of those who would always
Be trapped inside.
I walked home that day in full sunlight,
Past the cars jammed to a stop on the interstate,
Away from the arriving rescue crews
Who could do everything but save us
And the sirens converging on our ruins,
Sitting in my apartment two hours later
To begin the phone calls telling people
I was somehow still alive. |
| Lisa Jain Thompson (September 11, 2011) |
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Journal Entry
October 28, 2001
I spent last weekend with my girlfriend. On Saturday we visited the Maryland Renaissance Fesitval from its opening until closing. The weather was fall like only the Mid-Atlantic states have: temperature was in the high sixties to low seventies F; the leaves in the breeze rustling through the trees had begun to turn. We wandered from shop to shop, catching a show here and there and generally enjoying ourselves.
We had a friend with us who had never attended a faire. We had as much fun watching her enjoyment as anything.
And we had her trying on the various leather tops and bottoms in the shops, offering our encouragement and lustful admiration at times. She was a bit self-conscious at first, we were merely happily eager to see her model for us.
We didn't get home until very late, however, and once here I made a quick dinner for us before we collapsed to watch Kirsten Dunst in "Bring in On" and then went to sleep. It was a very good Saturday and sleeping beside my girlfriend always does wonders for me.
Sunday we woke up late. I made a quick breakfast and we all went out to show them the Pentagon. It was the first time I had been back to see the outside since I evacuated the building after the the attack.
We parked a distance away and walked slowly to as close to the building as they will let you get now. The spontaneous memorial at the Navy Annex was visible behind us. On the fences before us were fresh flowers and letters and drawings from school children and others.
I lasted five minutes before I had to turn and leave, walking up a slight rise to be alone and stop my tears.
I wonder what up is still bottled up inside of me waiting to be let up?
In mid-November, we are scheduled to move back into the Pentagon.
Wedge One.
A ten foot corridor distance from where our old offices were destroyed.
A ten foot safety corridor from the boarded up doors, hazardous warnings, and the scattered body pieces of our co-workers.
We will all be actively NOT thinking about the elephant in the next room.
We are alive, they are not. Life goes on.
I need to worry about Anthrax and Small Pox now, as well as the random crazy driving by to shoot us or fanatically bomb us in the name of god.
Zealots -- Christian, Islamic, televangelist or otherwise -- they only make life hell on earth.
Death to them all, domestic or foreign.
We deserve better gods than the hateful ones they pretend to speak for.
Journal Entry
September 30, 2001
Dylan on the stereo.
Fall breezing through my window.
Where have you been, Lisa Jain, Lisa Jain?
Oh where have you been my charming Lisa?
I've been inside the Pentagon and walked through the muck,
Seen the destruction, smelled the mold,
Been decontaminated, vacuumed and washed,
And come out again, less scared but older
Than I would care to admit.
I've seen the tumbled walls,
The shouting MP's, the workers in MOP gear,
I've gotten by the guards protecting the Metro,
Felt the hallways squish beneath my feet,
Seen with my eyes the A and B rings safely intact,
Looked down the corridors where friends have died.
I've felt the building shake and heard the death wail,
Seen the apocalypse ball up in dark smoke and fire,
And I've walked back out, my office packed up,
Coughing from the black mold seeping in my lungs.
The building served us well, protected us with its strength,
We survived to write and tell our tales
So no one will forget what happened that day.
Now we go to war to rain hellfire from the sky,
Send our soldiers into battle, bury those who die.
We drape ourselves in flags and flowers
And soon we will drape in blood.
F-15s fly above my head where commercial jets once flew.
Nothing we will do will bring back the dream that existed
Before the buildings exploded in flames and the dying.
Journal Entry
September 16, 2001
This is what I saw on September 11., 2001.
I had just told my general about the twin towers and had walked back to my office and was looking out the inner window over the inner drive
when I felt/heard an explosion over in the next corridor. The building shook, black smoke
quickly went up where we could see, and smell of burning jet fuel was in the air. We knew we were under attack. Closed our safes, got my bag, and
started the process of getting the hell out of the building.
The corridors were filled with smoke. We got outside and I looked back, saw the huge cloud of black smoke and started the wander back to my
apartment.
Took me an hour and a half to walk home. Was ok, until I got home and started looking at the television.
I don't know who I knew in that wing -- they are still not sure -- but there are probably people I know who are hurt or dead.
Won't find out for sometime who is dead and who is alive.
Everyone in my immediate office seems to be ok, not sure about their family members.
I've been crying on and off.
My office is still closed tomorrow because it is uninhabitable --- all the smoke and close into the burning section. We will be in temporary quarters elsewhere until we can move back in.
My old office, the one we moved out of the second week of August - the walls are all blown in from the explosion.
There would have been a lot more deaths if all the old offices were not empty and waiting to be renovated.
Less than a hundred yards made all the difference. |
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time passes, the world forgets, moves on to other, more pressing problems
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A Decade Survived |
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A decade survived
While the world self-destructs,
Ten years alive
Slip-sliding the inevitable,
Avoiding the mob outside the gates,
Locked and loaded, day by day,
Listening for the sounding rumble
That the temple wall itself is crumbling.
I go on, watchful and curious,
Speculating on the number of days
The Republic has left,
That I have left,
That we have left
Before the world collapses
And all and everything
Begins the slow crawl once again
Out of the darkness. |
| Lisa Jain Thompson (September 11, 2011) |
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| still my world separates in hot razor focus of the explosion |
A Cool-Warm Blue
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A clear, cool-warm blue morning,
Jets moving low overhead, one after another,
Working in and out of Reagan National Airport,
The sun crystal bright and not yet autumn,
A light breeze pleasuring the flesh,
Triggering expectations of a leisurely lunch
In the still green center courtyard:
It would be a long several months before we
Would lunch again among the historic magnolia,
Survivors, like ourselves, of an unprovoked assault
That separates our past from all our future presents. |
| -- Lisa Jain Thompson (September 11, 2011) |
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The View from the Annex
Halfway up the Annex hill,
And parked along the Joyce Street shoulders,
The tourists and emergency gawkers
Stop to take their photos
Of the dark violent gash in the Pentagon wall.
I've been on the inside,
Blooded by the explosion and afterwards:
The wound is nowhere as big as it looks,
The building is large, much like our nation,
And able to overcome even this.
It would be better, however,
If the pain wasn't treated like a Disneyland A Ticket.
Go home everyone,
And take all your cameras with you;
We aren't a stop on the Washington Tour
Or a snapshot to show your friends and neighbors.
Our lives deserve much more than that.
It's so easy to sit back,
Wave your flags and cheer,
When you aren't the one in the line fire.
We don't need to array ourselves in symbolism:
Blood is a much more effective proof.
Lisa Jain Thompson
September 2001 |
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when I look for them, the details are all their. faces. voices. the ones who did not make it.
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| Leaving the Building |
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We left the building quickly,
Inhaling burning fuel and human ash
As we slipped down the A Ring
Through the closing fire doors,
Four corridors and five floors
Of General Officers and file clerks,
Career professionals and maintenance crew,
The man who delivered the fresh bottled water
And wore those funny yellow shorts during the summer,
The Major whose Lieutenant Colonel husband
Was at a meeting near the area the plane struck;
We moved as one, bonded evermore by fire and blood
And the memory of our survival.
Three months later we all returned
To pursue our mutual enemy
As the Pentagon slowly healed
And grew stronger. |
| Lisa Jain Thompson (September 11, 2011) |
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| the doors continue to close forever |
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Spirals |
The fire doors are always closing,
The smoke is rolling through the hall;
Looking out from the center courtyard,
The flames are curling above the wall.
The wind shifts, the memory fades,
A plane high overhead is falling,
Plummeting through the clear blue sky,
Spiraling directly to where I stand.
The wind shifts again and I then see
The jet is over a hundred yards off;
I turn my head, sidestep, and watch
The dream come crashing to an end. |
| — Lisa Jain Thompson (September 11, 2011) |
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Windows
I stare out my window,
Watching ravens fly against blue sky;
The setting sun angles off the monument
As I search for some sign of smoke.
Everything looks so peaceful,
Just as it did when I got off the Metro
At Pentagon Station that day.
The difference is in my heart
Where the rubble still smolders.
Lisa Jain Thompson
September 14, 2001
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| life goes on, vigilance is kept |
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Resilience |
I am
Not dead yet
And my attacker is
All seems right
He will not attempt
To kill me again
Let them try
I fear no evil
I will bring hellfire
On their children's children
Should ever they
Threaten mine |
| — Lisa Jain Thompson (September 11, 2011) |
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the poet must record the world she finds around her |
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Shift Duty
In the fading late summer light,
As autumn cooled the September sun,
We watched silver airplanes crash New York,
The twin towers crumble, the smoke and people,
Firemen struggling to lay calm to destruction
And save whatever lives survived the fiery crumble.
We watched and felt the building shake,
Rattle with the sound of American Airlines Flight 77
Exploding into the Pentagon's western wall,
The black ball of burning jet fuel coiling
Above the limestone walls and red slate roof,
Flames consuming flesh and bone and plane.
Experienced from the inside, shielded as we were
From the gaping debris, 184 screams went silent
In the surprise and confusion that rapidly settled
Into a surreal mix of reflex and training:
We closed our safes and exited down corridors
Filled with the smell of burning hydrocarbons. |
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— Lisa Jain Thompson (September 11, 2011) |
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Ground Zero
The streets are dead. Except downtown. I am in walking distance. I smell the strange mixture of debris and smoke and dust and... dead people.
Jill Falzoi
In the East Village, New York
9.11.01
1.
I am burnt out like the Pentagon,
Crumbled like the towers into rubble and confusion.
My mind races through the seventh floor window,
Stares at the smoldering offices where I worked
Until the moment of impact, watching the internet
Provide live pictures of New York.
There is a hole where my friends used to be,
Emptiness where I competed
For pet projects and congressional largess.
I was looking out the window
When the 757 exploded:
A hundred yards to the right and it was me.
The black smoke curled quickly over the building
The floors shook the smell of burning jet fuel
Filled corridors and lungs as we escaped
To the early fall morning and the long walk home.
2.
I am more of a witness to destruction than I care to be:
Jehovah, Shiva, any of the jealous vengeful gods
Could have done this.
Sabers are easy to rattle from the distance.
Digging for the bodies and replacing grave flowers
Is always tougher than we would be led to believe.
We breed too quickly and die too easily,
Ten million years of primate evolution on the trigger.
Yet let ourselves be led
Again and again and again until we learn
That our blood goes deeper
Than religion or expedient political solutions.
We walk the same steps as Lucy,
Leaving our footprints in the rubble.
3.
Sirens and choppers fill the night.
F-16s the day sky.
The stars were strangely silent,
The sun extremely bright.
My heart is empty, spent completely,
Numbed by Prozac and Maker's Mark.
I would have taken out
The Washington Monument,
It would have served the same purpose
And left less dead and injured.
The Pentagon still stands,
Burying its dead and continuing on
As it has for the eons before.
We are good at burying our dead,
It's keep people alive that is our failing.
4.
I flinch at sirens and jets overhead,
Remember the explosion and the many dead.
I do not need the television to see the Trade Center crumble,
I do not need the radio to feel my building shake
And hear the screams of crying women evacuating to safety
Or the eyes of grim faced men pretending they understood
And could make sense of the chaos that fell around us.
The president escapes to Nebraska
As I walk with the rest of us home towards tomorrow.
5.
The building is still unstable,
Cadaver dogs searching the stones and asbestos.
One hundred yards to the right,
Starpoet would be no more,
Made silent like Sappho by religion once again,
No more to Whitman, No more to Shakespeare,
No more stolen from Heinlein and Ginzburg
And a thousand other dead ancient voices.
Eight hundred or twenty thousand,
The numbers are meaningless. Once we are gone,
We speak no more. All ends are the same.
6.
Macbeth hath murdered sleep,
Tumbling us headlong into the abyss
Beneath the sun kissed wave.
We willingly seek out the behemoth,
Hoping to control him
Even as he pulls us deeper.
To sleep, to dream trippingly of brave new worlds
Where men such as these don't exist:
Who would seem the greater fool,
He who allows the bomb to be made
Or one who wields it for god and country?
Neither of us is blameless.
Our hands are soiled by generations' blooding,
Tribe against tribe, brother against brother
In the name of flag or king or divine intervention.
It is all the same.
7.
Who speaks for humanity?
I am a single ancient voice grown weary by the centuries,
Who will listen to my whisper when the world is falling?
The smoke clouds ours eyes and parches our throat.
My song grows dimmer amidst the clamor.
The fog engulfs us all.
When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d—and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring."
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, Poem 192.
Lisa Jain Thompson
In the ashes of the Pentagon
Arlington Virginia
9.12.01
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| Copyright © Lisa Jain Thompson 1948-2011. Back issues are in the Newsletter Section of the StarPoet website. Visit my contact page and get in touch. |
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