A French plane crashes in the Atlantic.
Auto plants all over America prepare to close.
The last survivor of the Titanic dies.
A doctor is shot to death in his church,
presumably by another religious man.

It’s keeping us up at night.
Peaceful sleep is an endangered species.
Soon churches everywhere will be holding
round the clock services for bleary congregants
demanding that prayer and supplication start working again
at their usual job of keeping hope afloat —

because it’s sinking, isn’t it?  What we knew
and counted on is disappearing under wave after wave
of unfamiliar tragedy. ( Or, rather, tragedy
once unfamiliar to us all here, in this place.
It’s not like people haven’t died before, or been killed,
it’s not like industries haven’t failed before.)
It hasn’t been the same since the Towers fell,

we keep telling each other.
We tell God that all the time too.
We beg Him to put them back up.
We keep reading the news to see if He’s been listening.
It’s hard to say.

Some of us,
supine and insomniac
in the lightless tent of our worst imagining,
are afraid that He is listening,
but to someone else this time.

Some of us believe He’s dead, or vacationing,
maybe in the south of France.
(Maybe He was on that plane?)

Once in a while,
someone points out how strange it is
that we should care so much about
the specifics of who is dying and what is failing.
People, they say, are dying and killing and destitute
and scared and angry and they always have been.
It’s always felt like hell to be alive for some.
It’s just been a while since it was our turn to feel it here.

We usually do something to the ones who say that —
nod at them before turning our backs on them,
or else we kill them.  The difference, we tell them,
is that it isn’t supposed to be us.  And when we say “us,”

we include everyone we like to think of as “us,”
the most mutable category in our world.  “Us”
changes.  It gets bigger, smaller, elongates,
closes in on itself late at night in our cold houses,
blows out its own walls when it’s sunny and warm and
all is going OK.

The news keeps reminding us of what “us” means.

It’s a plane full of people, maybe some Americans aboard.
It’s our very own auto industry coming back strong, maybe.
It’s the last link to the last iconic tragedy disappearing
and leaving us with mythology we’ll have to make ourselves.
It’s the doctor dying for his cause, the killer killing for his.
It’s saying that it’s all gonna be alright, and warm, and sunny,
once we get over this rough patch,
glimmers of hope out there,
it’s saying
shhhh…

go back to sleep…

but we can’t.
The sound of of that new tower
being built
is keeping us up.

Stumbling along in the twilight
still wet from the fear that
this path will end
in the same place the old one
ended, he understands

that it’s out of his hands now,
as this downhill trail
has become steep enough
to keep him from turning back.

Behind him were boulders the size
of mansions which he’d had to slide down
and cliffs just high enough to jump from
without dying, though the landing
had sent a shock up his legs to his chest.
He’d never get back up again.

Night-running now.
Here it flattens out a bit
but the roots of big pines
ridge the packed dirt underfoot.

Owl calls in the trees.  The birds themselves
unseen.  Twigs cracking twenty paces
off the path, in the moonless dark.

Ahead is the thunder of the river
cutting the bottom of the valley.
It’ll lead him out if it doesn’t kill him.

He strips off everything but the shoes
and runs faster.  The plunge ahead
will freeze him but it’s all that’s left to do.
There will be no need for modesty if he comes out alive
and if he dies, he won’t care about how it looks
when they find his body.  He’ll end up
as a story of folly
for the ones who might come after.

Only he will have known
how it feels
to hit the water running.  To forget
failure and success.  To fall
into the impersonal night and become
one small part of the Whole.

To chill down as he smashes
along in the current, the pain fading.
To see the stars as he goes blind.
To be alive at last.

Before the parade,
a veteran
lit a cigarette,
saying:

Some of us
that went to war,
we enjoyed it.

Some of us missed it after it was done.

Consider what it took for us
to resettle ourselves
among you folks. Keeping that
kind of fun quiet isn’t easy.
We wanted to tell someone
about it, just to get past it.
But no one wanted to hear,
so we tried to forget.
Ever since the Towers, though,
no one can get enough of us.

We’re smoking together now.
No one’s sitting near us
because to smoke, these days,
is to translate undesirable wisdom
from a language
only marginally less taboo
than the warrior tongue.

Ok, I’m listening.
What was it like?
I ask him.

A blue fog rolls
from the old mouth.
Then:

Just like this,

and held up the cigarette.

I knew it was bad for me
but I did it anyway.
I started to do it
because
others did it.
I kept at it
because I couldn’t stop.

He looked
at
my shining eyes
and at
the butt
burning bright
in my own mouth.

You’d have done fine there,

he spat,
before
the band
drowned him out
while making my heart
float out of my chest
like a big
bad cloud
of Martian wind,
or delighted razors,
or something else
no one
could fully understand.

Part of me steps aside
and another part of me
steps forward
to make a name for itself.

It says:
I am the ocean,
I cover everything that is deep
and swallow everything
that dares me…no, wait:
I’m the harbor, the destination,
the notch in the edge of the ocean.
No, sorry:
I’m the slave ship arriving,
carrying stolen anguish.  No,
that’s wrong: I’m the trader
waiting to sell the pain of others.
Again, sorry: I’m the new owner
of what shouldn’t be owned at all.
Ugh, wrong, wrong again: I’m
the cargo, the village of origin,
the buyer’s tag, the auction block,
the chain, the whip,
the eyes leaning on the crutch
of the North Star…

A part of me tosses in bed for hours
listening to this until
another part of me steps up
to elbow that first liar aside
and say:

I’m the feather on the plains,
the oil full of ghost trees,
blood on sand I’ve never seen,
the dirty songster in an alley
glimpsed once from a cab window
and then reimagined
to find room for my moral
at the end of his song.

No, says another part of me,
then tosses pennies at the others
to drive them back long enough
for a chance to say:

I am sponge enough
to have sopped up
everything all my lovers
ever told me.

I’m the mask
that gives me the freedom
to let them call themselves “cunt”
as I misquote them.
I am above reproach
when I put myself
in their mouths.

Closer,
says the sleeping part of me,
admitting that he’s indeed been listening
to all of this.

That part of me
becomes awake enough then
to say:

I’m stupid
and exhausted
from division.
I’m groggy
at this hour
but trying to figure out
who deputized me
to speak on behalf
of what has been screaming unheard
for eons. Why wasn’t it ever enough
that they could speak for themselves?
It’s like everyone and everything
is asleep and I’m an alarm clock
banging out “I, I, I, I, I, I, I…”
on behalf of full-on daylight
that ought to be enough but isn’t,
chattering
until I’m shut off
with a backhand slap
to the panic button.

Yes, that’s it,
that’s the answer,
I tell myself.

The part of me that has been
so fitfully drowsing
for so long
rolls back over,
while another part of me
smooths my hair, tucks me back in,
lullabies me into distant dreams.

When the breathing slows
and becomes regular,
that part of me looks up and says,

I am
the dummy on an insistent knee
with a hand up my back
and a substitute voice.

Look as close as you want,
you’ll never see those other lips move.

That part of me
will accept your applause
while the rest of me is put back in my box
to sleep.