I’ll be preparing three poems for tonight.

One, “Dispatch from the Home Front, Halloween 2001”, I wrote shortly after the attacks, in early November of 2001. It’s in the About.com online anthology of poems about 9/11 if anyone’s desperate to read it.

The second one will be a poem by Susan McMaster from the 100 Poets Against the War Anthology. You can find it, if you’re so inclined, at http://www.nthposition.com in the online version of the anthology.

I’d provide links, but I’m pressed for time.

This is the third one…amazing what a deadline will do.

Thank you again, LJ Posse, for helping me think. Love you guys…

GIFT: for the Stonewalkers

We have always
wanted our gifts to come to us
tied off neatly

with tidy bows.
This isn’t one of those. Unraveled
ends trail off this one like ripcords,

just waiting for one strong tug
to open up and set it free.
It may wait for years, and

even when pulled long and hard,
it may never unwrap completely
in one lifetime. Still, every gift needs

to be opened. Everyone
needs to see what may be inside –
despite the fear that it may

rise, or burst, or be so
unlike what was expected that
everything around it will have to change.

This is the hope contained in anything before it is unwrapped:
that everything will change
once someone reaches out, takes hope in hand,

and pulls.

Can I tell you, I’m scared to death to be reading tonight at this event?

Here I am, speaking, reading allegedly meaningful poetry to a group of September 11 family members united for peace.

And I can’t even read a Sept. 11 poem in NYC, three years after the event, because it makes me so insanely upset.

What do I choose? The pieces written in the year following, that speak to the pain and anger? I don’t think so.

Yet the more recent stuff seems wrong for this event.

And the political stuff is just flat out wrong, as they want the event to be decidedly non-partisan.

It’s not just about material choice — it’s also about my state of mind.

I’m not worthy to be there, is the main thing I’m thinking.

Who would be, is the answer I keep getting back.