Live on CNN

Little knives and gasoline.
Paper-cutters tucked away.
Innocence is used like darts
applied to terror's target hole.
Stolen soldiers change their bands,
become unwitting swastikas.
Rifled icebergs hurled
at the ship we built
that once advanced in majesty,
mast around its knocking knees.
To quote a correspondent's eyes,
his twitching tongue:
"No words exist." The cameras roll.
Boats seem strangely casual
jetting past stone statues of our liberty.
Even in the wake of sin,
a calm procession fills the screen.
Prayer will be a metal bobbin
spinning 'til a quilt is sewn.
A nation weeps its willow leaves.
Lips should be a match and are —
lighting candled unison.

Long parades of oiled caskets lie ahead —
widows do a tribal dance.
Moccasins and army boots
will mark their footprints on this earth.
Hymns askance but screeching tires,
gluing rubber to the road.
Hands should be a million links
forming bracelets from the shame.
Bodies pressed against this hurt
is all we have for tourniquets.
Streets deserted but for grief.
Pictures of a flight attendant
heading home for breakfast
on her husband's birthday —
caught in hateful ricochet.
He'll never munch on toast again,
crack an egg without the mucus of a tear
that might have held a butterfly.

— Janet I. Buck