A note to those war hawks out there for clarification. Because I'm realizing that people don't quite understand why so many of us are up in arms.

Those of us opposed to war fully support the troops. They're doing what they're told to do, it's their job. But it's the purpose that we're fighting, it's telling the President that the ends don't justify the means and that supporting the troops doesn't mean agreeing blindly to this war or supporting it. We accept that our President is an self-righteous, arrogant man who just spat on the world and rendered the only peacekeeping organization in the world useless.

We support out troops by waging peace to prevent them from harm. What is more American than that?

I fail to understand how anyone couldn't have a visceral reaction to the images we've seen in the past week. The images of bombs lighting up the night sky over Baghdad turned my stomach and made me angry in every bone of my body. Sure, Saddam Hussein is an evil man, I know that. I realized in those few fleeting seconds of newscast that I firmly realized why I was so against this whole thing.

I was here on September 11th, 2001. I was at FDNY Headquarters for a Fellowship placement that began on that day. I saw and watched the day unfold from there. I can never erase the image of the needle slipping downward into black smoke rapidly turning grey. Nor can I erase the sounds coming over the walkie-talkies of guys on the ground. Nor can I erase the stillness of the city for the remainder of the week, the quiet, abandoned streets. The silence of Times Square. I can never forget going to Ground Zero two weeks later with the Commissioner of the Office of Fire and Life Safety, looking at a 100 ft piece of the Trade Center lodged at a precarious angle into the side of an adjacent building.

I hate that the President is using what happened here as an excuse. I hate that he's playing on our emotions and our fears to perpetuate a circle of violence and hate. I'd love it if someone got rid of him. But I wouldn't want him dead. I just want him disposed so that he can't screw up our country any longer. Hell, there's not much difference between us and them. We've got a dictatorship, ourselves, too.

But most of all, I hate the feeling that Americans out there watch the buildings fall in Baghdad and cheer. Because just two years ago, we watched three symbols of America attacked. And we watched two of them fall. And we live with the reality of what we have lost every day here in the New York City. No matter where you turn, it's staring you in the face, though the site has been cleared. The psychological effects are still lurking around, hitting you randomly as you simply walk to get lunch. I work exactly a block away from the site. I turn to look at it every day. And for two split seconds, I think that I might still see them, gleaming in the sun, towering over us. And then for a split second, I remember.

And then I wonder how America would feel if they didn't stop with the Trade Center that day. What if they had gone on to destroy the Statue of Liberty, Grand Central, the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, Times Square, and Central Park? What if they didn't stop at the Pentagon and hit the Capitol Building, the White House, the National Archives? What if they marched 250,000 through California, moving through the plains in the west, destroying cities, taking prisoners, through the midwest and to the Capitol? What would you have felt as you watch everything around you falling, your buildings bombed - the very structure of your life and your home reduced to ashes?

Then would you accept and understand why unilateral war is wrong? Then would you say that unmitigated attacks are a form of terrorism?

But most of all, can you finally understand why I feel the way I do? Because of our arrogance, what makes you think that it won't happen again?

___________
Ani DiFranco is my hero.

SELF EVIDENT
Ani DiFranco
(inspired by the WTC disaster)

Yes,
Us people are just poems
We're 90% metaphor
With a leanness of meaning
Approaching hyper-distillation
And once upon a time
We were moonshine
Rushing down the throat of a giraffe
Yes, rushing down the long hallway
Despite what the p.a. announcement says
Yes, rushing down the long stairs
With the whiskey of eternity
Fermented and distilled
To eighteen minutes
Burning down our throats
Down the hall
Down the stairs
In a building so tall
That it will always be there
Yes, it's part of a pair
There on the bow of Noah's ark
The most prestigious couple
Just kickin’ back parked
Against a perfectly blue sky
On a morning beatific
In its indian summer breeze
On the day that America
Fell to its knees
After strutting around for a century
Without saying thank you
Or please

And the shock was subsonic
And the smoke was deafening
Between the setup and the punch line
Cuz we were all on time for work that day
We all boarded that plane for to fly
And then while the fires were raging
We all climbed up on the windowsill
And then we all held hands
And jumped into the sky

And every borough looked up when it heard the first blast
And then every dumb action movie was summarily surpassed
And the exodus uptown by foot and motorcar
Looked more like war than anything i've seen so far
So far
So far
So fierce and ingenious
A poetic specter so far gone
That every jackass newscaster was struck dumb and stumbling
Over 'oh my god' and 'this is unbelievable' and on and on
And I'll tell you what, while we're at it
You can keep the pentagon
Keep the propaganda
Keep each and every TV
That's been trying to convince me
To participate
In some prep school punk's plan to perpetuate retribution
Perpetuate retribution
Even as the blue toxic smoke of our lesson in retribution
Is still hanging in the air
And there's ash on our shoes
And there's ash in our hair
And there's a fine silt on every mantle
From Hell's Kitchen to Brooklyn
And the streets are full of stories
Sudden twists and near misses
And soon every open bar is crammed to the rafters
With tales of narrowly averted disasters
And the whiskey is flowin
Like never before
As all over the country
Folks just shake their heads
And pour

So here's a toast to all the folks who live in Palestine,
Afghanistan, Iraq, El Salvador

Here's a toast to the folks living on the Pine Ridge Reservation
Under the stone cold gaze of Mt. Rushmore

Here's a toast to all those nurses and doctors
Who daily provide women with a choice
Who stand down a threat the size of Oklahoma City
Just to listen to a young woman's voice

Here's a toast to all the folks on death row right now
Awaiting the executioner's guillotine
Who are shackled there with dread and can only escape into their heads
To find peace in the form of a dream

Cuz take away our playstations
And we are a third world nation
Under the thumb of some blue blood royal son
Who stole the oval office and that phony election
I mean
It don't take a weatherman
To look around and see the weather
Jeb said he'd deliver Florida, folks
And boy did he ever

And we hold these truths to be self evident:
#1 George W. Bush is not president
#2 America is not a true democracy
#3 the media is not fooling me
Cuz I am a poem heeding hyper-distillation
I've got no room for a lie so verbose
I'm looking out over my whole human family
And I'm raising my glass in a toast

Here's to our last drink of fossil fuels
Let us vow to get off of this sauce
Shoo away the swarms of commuter planes
And find that train ticket we lost
Cuz once upon a time the line followed the river
And peeked into all the backyards
And the laundry was waving
The graffiti was teasing us
From brick walls and bridges
We were rolling over ridges
Through valleys
Under stars
I dream of touring like Duke Ellington
In my own railroad car
I dream of waiting on the tall blonde wooden benches
In a grand station aglow with grace
And then standing out on the platform
And feeling the air on my face

Give back the night its distant whistle
Give the darkness back its soul
Give the big oil companies the finger finally
And relearn how to rock-n-roll
Yes, the lessons are all around us and a change is waiting there
So it's time to pick through the rubble, clean the streets
And clear the air
Get our government to pull its big dick out of the sand
Of someone else's desert
Put it back in its pants
And quit the hypocritical chants of
Freedom forever

Cuz when one lone phone rang
In two thousand and one
At ten after nine
On nine one one
Which is the number we all called
When that lone phone rang right off the wall
Right off our desk and down the long hall
Down the long stairs
In a building so tall
That the whole world turned
Just to watch it fall



And while we're at it
Remember the first time around?
The bomb?
The Ryder truck?
The parking garage?
The princess that didn't even feel the pea?
Remember joking around in our apartment on avenue D?

Can you imagine how many paper coffee cups would have to change their design
Following a fantastical reversal of the new york skyline?!

It was a joke, of course
It was a joke
At the time
And that was just a few years ago
So let the record show
That the FBI was all over that case
That the plot was obvious and in everybody's face
And scoping that scene
Religiously
The CIA
Or is it KGB?
Committing countless crimes against humanity
With this kind of eventuality
As its excuse
For abuse after expensive abuse
And it didn't have a clue
Look, another window to see through
Way up here
On the 104th floor
Look
Another key
Another door
10% literal
90% metaphor
3000 some poems disguised as people
On an almost too perfect day
Should be more than pawns
In some asshole's passion play
So now it's your job
And it's my job
To make it that way
To make sure they didn't die in vain
Sshhhhhh....
Baby listen
Hear the train?