Found Poem At Ground Zero
on the West Side Hwy forever it seems..
sign I hold reads "YO ! Stay Strong "
(not, for along time, rescuers )
Can't sleep and usually there 2 am on.
Just we stalwarts, another and me,
named the rats, ben laden and saddam .
rescued from a bad guy by a mounted police...
fed the horse, Ritchie, Krispy Kremes
workers tell me tales that no one wants to hear
of the hell downtown, but they have to talk
one secret type Air Force recovery guy
crawling underground with green glow stick ,
scuba type lights.. sees ahead a red glow
wonders, "since when did they make red ones? "
it is molten steel . like volcanic lava.. further along there is more ,
though this FLOWS like water it is so hot..
Core drilling the ground temp is 1200 degrees !
the dead zone might be that way for a year ..
tires, equipment, men wear out fast
but the men don't quit.
now I see , for the first time, workers with those light hats, knee pads
another specialized team.. (the crazy brave ones )
the buildings, when plane hit, thrust INTO the ground.
digging exposes under water and dirt
if the internal water dam (the bathtub) is breached. .
maybe sink the land standing on slurry.
Yesterday , in the dark .. two long lines of hwy patrol biker police, .
one STOOD UP on the bike seat..just for us, in the dark
The escort service for bodies, parts and vips..
now we personally know the morgue trucks..
18 wheelrigs too are cold enough to help
don't seem so omnious with Purdue on the sides..
we put hands over heart for
this sad time.. as if it isn't all sad.
survivors come by boat down the Hudson to
a memorial site at zero..
they are only civvies allowed there.. but man ..
the way gawkers want to see the carnage
ATF, FBI , CIA, NOMA, DEP , OEM, USA, USN USAF.FEMA
.. . the alphabet is empty .
the true goodness of dear people helps .
another funeral to go to today ...
sorry i rambled..
thx for the listen..
love/need you guys..
-- found in a usenet post, September 2001 by Harmon Dow. Copyright 2001 Gail Concannon and Harmon Dow. This poem may not be copied or distributed without permission from Harmon Dow, which will probably be granted, and likely not cost you anything, but is necessary because the poem as it appears on this website is not quite right in its formatting (see below) and I want to make sure you get the right format.
In September of 2001, after the terrible attack on our country by Islamic fanatics, Gail Concannon, a member of the usenet group alt.culture.military-brats living in New York City less than a mile from the World Trade Center posted a series of reports from Ground Zero. In one of those reports, I saw what you now see above, which is known as a "found poem."
A found poem is a writing which is not intended as a poem when written, but is found to contain elements of poetry which are brought out when the written lines are restructured into poetic format. The lines are not rearranged, no words are changed, although sometimes punctuation is added or eliminated, words or phrases struck.
In this found poem, I eliminated some sentences, words or phrases, but not much at all. Everything you see above was in the message that Gail posted.
I think this poem is remarkable for its emotional force, and for the way that it replicates the shatteredness of the days after the attack.
NOTE ON FORMATTING. I had to figure out a way to shoehorn this poem into the preformated space Apple provides. This means that some of the lines wrap over to the next line when I don't want them to. All the lines should be on one line, & not wrapped at all. It is possible that if you do a select all and a copy, you will wind up with a correctly formatted poem when you paste it into a text reader - works for some people so if you want to see this poem laid out right, give it a try. If stanzas 3, 5, 9, and 11 are two lines, then you have it right.
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To find where this came from, copy
http://www.911exhibit.state.gov/ into your browser address box
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