CONFESSION ZERO

The Cupboard is Bare , The Symbol of Our Days , 9/11 of Hunger , Have You Heard , Sleeping In , Where Have You Been , This Is Not A Poem , One Life, One Skull, One Bone, One Moment , Humanity in Free Fall , Widowed Sky , Floor by Floor, Beam by Beam, Soul by Soul , In Pursuit of 9/11 , Omnipresent Enemy , Squalling Stillness , Leave the Box-Cutter, Carry the Lie © 2011 by mark prime

What’s come of this, our day? Feels like a pale remembrance as if we've not slept since or our eyes never fully opened, living near death, over and over, never realizing what we've done. The dead walk by our closed doors just as they did before. Maybe years from now someone will open them and see there’s no one there, open the cupboards and gaze at the ghost’s of a bare boned affection that move about in the living dust, in the echoes of our dancing within the last of our days, even if there’s nothing worth remembering or somehow it all got misplaced, perhaps tucked away for a rainy day, a keepsake for tomorrow that never came… or never was. Walk with heads held high. Honor all the love that’s been taken away by your own hand and all those you were meant to touch, or should have smiled upon and embraced, for soon all this will be gone. © 2010 by mark prime World Food Programme ~ 911 ~ More 9/11 poetry ...

Lessons learned from 9/11 terrorist attacks? What is it that the wail of our voice has given us in the stamp of days lurching forward on the damp streets, eyes upon our feet, omitting the faces reflected in this glass grown in our hands and thickened skies over the oceans clot of war’s nectar, man’s squander, while mountains give way to unconscious machines, voices, wooden with a thick green-love? What is it that the wail of our voice has given us that the march of a grassless plain or an iceless crest cannot sign, we gauge their descent like a killer, set to be forgiven sins we’ll soon commit, as pointed fingers wag at the surging breach leaning its majesty over the dampened sun. © 2010 by mark prime

When hunger strikes it is not as swift, it is not as jaw droppingly horrific or nearly as visual or pragmatic as when terror comes. Terror comes as a thundering blast, piercing the rust of contentment, disintegrating steely assurance- hunger slithers in. News of terror strikes fear and panic, seduces our pounding, frantic wits with darkness, dust and death devouring whatever’s left. Hunger pays no attention to time or place running our courage over our eyes with the private ghastliness of its teeth veiled in bravery’s demise. We’d recognize hunger in a crowded airport. Know it if we accidentally bumped into it and turn away from its ugly and careworn face. Terror’s not made that way. It arrives with a most thunderous shot, penetrating the crust of our indulgence, obliterating our steely assurance while hunger slithers in. Terror calls upon a nation to sacrifice, stand firm where fear imagines it’s safe, as if distance were a cushion around breathing, bravery, the call of sle...

Have you heard? A country's taking the wrong drug, slipping the noose round death, fitting shores in electric wire, defending human rights in jest. Have you heard? Ground Zero to open in 2009. The country's ingesting Pantethol, five thousand milligrams in all. Skipping out on the Pavulon dose, straight to Potassium Chloride. Have you heard? Ground Zero to open in 2009. A country in this slaughtered age- O! Can you hear the failing noise; bombs and guns; depleting disgrace, chambers filled with a dying face. Have you heard? Ground Zero to open in 2009. We longed for more. We yearned. A lighted path, an eternal flame hovering there on golden wing instead, two-way mirror our malign. Have you heard? Ground Zero to open in 2009. A country's taking the wrong drug, slipping noose of bloody election, fitting in shackles of mined metal, and governing the self-injection. Have you heard? Ground Zero to open in 2009. Have you heard? © 2008 by mark prime/thepoet...

Winking in our dreams, slumbering past our night's error sleeping deeply beyond the breaking hour, leasing mass murderers to slip inside our care. Winking in our dreams, twisting complicit in cradle’s red linen, we are drowning of our slacked truth sleeping deeply inside our mourning nine eleven. White sound weaves our breath upon our headless tyranny, slips inside our busy lives. Dawdling hope, we are drowning of our worthless and quiet dissent. It is time to awake, cease and desist our hideous moment, let slip our blade’s humanity within its rib and awake open eyed of our most looming descent. © 2007 by mark prime/thepoetryman

Remains of Three More Sept. 11 Victims Identified Remains recovered years ago of three victims from the Sept. 11 attacks have been identified through new DNA testing. Two were passengers on American Airlines Flight 11; the third victim's identity was withheld at the family's request. Identities of about 40 percent of the 2,749 victims have never been confirmed. Where have you been? In the space flanked by breathing, in the sky's soul resting `neath the globe? We’ve been waiting under the moon for you, waiting on your bones to say, “Living may resume”. Where are the others? Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman

One life. One skull. One bone. One moment. Human remains… nothing to you, another collateral shard, political gain, fragment of meaningless life spiraling underground beneath the weight of thousands. Raise thy fetid memorial, bury the unburied. Appearances… soiled callousness, numb sanctimony of one. What if it were two or twenty? Would the dark machines pause? Bow their heads, bent in mechanical prayer? Rewind the tape, see a flash, a passport, a bomb, a gun, a skull, a bone, a soul sealed deep down, down, down, dead, again. Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman 'No building halt' at Ground Zero

O! Humanity flying down! Will thou not catch thyself and stay a while longer? Can you not hear the music within you, the sweet reverie of morning warble, “Live… Live… Live…”? Look to your sky not to your feet. Look to serenity not to the eyes of oblivion. Look to the children dancing in the night. Look heavenward! Right thy journey! See the bird’s wing aloft in splendid flight, may not you be like her and stay a while longer? O! Humanity slipping `way! Do not forsake this world! Stay within her arms! If you turn `way and face not the writhing truth you’ll let slip a fragile magnificence and her children will laughter end... © 2008 by mark prime/thepoetryman

The sun had its sky, the sky had its blue, the blue had its clouds, all held to an ensuing loss. The world had its nectar to offer, stunning mountain ranges, plentiful fields of grain, sustaining waters… The sky did then forsake them on this day, widowed of a pristine love bathing them in joy, the weight of it unhappily tumbled down, congregating with one another, mourning… The sun had its sky, the sky had its blue, the blue had its clouds, all gripped in looming collapse. After the shock of death’s swift alliance with anger they held their heads high and marched onward, all the while in grief’s search they strode past denial and posed the earth's hovering question, Why did the sky abandon our trust? “I’ve never seen people enjoying their husband’s death so much.” screeched the hollow voice of the rigor-mortis-of-rant, the miscreant’s language spilled from an empty breach splintering, once again, the solemn day’s widowed sky. Copyright © 2006 markrprime/thepoetryman ...

O! Madness of our most maddening day! You come as an unshakable memory sidling up against our ashen skin, howling low your senseless deluge, through bitter sky you plummet to our minds, tattered ruins of time floating face down, floor by floor, beam by beam, soul by soul… The squall, long gone, remains a dust of shattered will standing on the bitter streets of these events, bringing quarrel to honest men in dwindling light. A jagged state split by wealth and power, haves and have mores cackling in wretchedness, hording the air in search of our lungs, floor by floor, beam by beam, soul by soul… Molding a single day into mantra for empire, rattling sabers and beating drums to tyranny’s stride. You crushed them. You still crush them in rigid desire. O! Let this day alone! You must now let it be! Let them rest. Let the embers fade. Let them go! Release this day. Liberate it. Set it free, floor by floor, beam by beam, soul by soul… Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman The Path to...

Our dreams, our thoughts with silent hands groping for light, folding outward through the streets in hunt of a forged hope, what voice do they follow? What path calls to them, the bright toxic dust-spattered air, the founding ships, the bright soil aching for seed, the whimper of a child? Do they seek the stolen, warped, molten frame of glinting icons? There is no learning if they pursue the light to shine innocence. There is naught to glean in reaffirming glory’s ghost, igniting the once tall beacon if they seek to blind over truth and not use its sturdy beam to reinforce new hope. Have they crawled over garbage and corpses equally empty of love? While they search do they witness murder, disease, and the awful voices calling to them, “sing the anthem”, “pray for country”, “salute the flag”, “one idea”, “one god”? Have they freely begged, groveled, pawing that they might mean something? Our ideas, our thoughts with silent hands groping for light, folding outward through the ...

This year what shall we commemorate? What ghosts shall accompany our odes? Are we forever to bow to a headless myth? Is it right? Is it hopeful? Will it pass on, joining those without cause now gone? Time is a fickle creature shaped like dreams, last year can be no more than one year, the year before that and the next and the next. Ghosts wander in our minds not upon the ground and only in dreams might we call to them. Rage flies swiftly dispersing its grave weight and we feel nothing behind our dead face. Have we ever felt anything, headless phantoms, we? Last year mocks not the year before. It is we, we who mock the solemn red dawn. We’ll soon bow our headless heads in majestic awe and whispers of vengeance soaring on high, burdening the ground with a wrathful screeching sound. Next year how shall we mourn? Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman

With the minuscule world’s squalling stillness erupting solidly through the callous smoothness is it possible to downright believe the upright deceit, to misunderstand its audacious correctness? This finite universe lashes kindly against its void. Words are meaningless in the silent pertinence, the smiling and dismal days writhe still of wishes and turn back goodness upon their deviant constancy… How could words have lost their meaning that day? Why is nothing to be believed after the plane’s shadows? Have they so ruthlessly shattered principles that even language holds no meaning? Is it possible to conceive serenity lying in the fatal position? Is it possible to erect peace with words bent in war? Fighting for freedom while freedom itself falls away is sign that the shrieking birds toppled more than just the towers… Copyright © 2006 markrprime / thepoetryman 

For this flight is there enough food to nourish the dark and horrid famine? Plenty water to ease across the razor’s barren edge? Sufficient breath to coax this; a collusion deep within? Is there ample shelter from this; a deceitful tomb? (Truth. Is there none?) Who needs the truth? Lies are more valuable, made to easily pass through the takeoff's devising eyes. It’s the clever packing of truth and lies into a single carry-on that is the trick. (Lies?) Yes! It won’t turn the plane’s shadow into flame. (Flame?) Yes! It won’t cut the neck of slipshod freedom. (Freedom?) Yes! It won’t bring massive terror to the shores. (Terror? Freedom? Flame?) Yes! Lies! Lies; packed together as one, more easily sound round, edging near enough to truth. Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman