9/11 moment of silence

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unsecluded

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A MOMENT OF SILENCE, BEFORE I START THIS POEM



Before I start this poem, I'd like to ask you to join me
In a moment of silence
In honor of those who died in the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon last September 11th.
I would also like to ask you
To offer up a moment of silence
For all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned,
disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes,
For the victims in both Afghanistan and the U.S.

And if I could just add one more thing...
A full day of silence
For the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the
hands of U.S.-backed Israeli
forces over decades of occupation.
Six months of silence for the million and-a-half Iraqi people,
mostly children, who have died of
malnourishment or starvation as a result of an 11-year U.S.
embargo against the country.

Before I begin this poem,
Two months of silence for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa,
Where homeland security made them aliens in their own country.
Nine months of silence for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
Where death rained down and peeled back every layer of
concrete, steel, earth and skin
And the survivors went on as if alive.
A year of silence for the millions of dead in Vietnam - a people,
not a war - for those who
know a thing or two about the scent of burning fuel, their
relatives' bones buried in it, their babies born of it.
A year of silence for the dead in Cambodia and Laos, victims of
a secret war ... ssssshhhhh....
Say nothing ... we don't want them to learn that they are dead.
Two months of silence for the decades of dead in Colombia,
Whose names, like the corpses they once represented, have
piled up and slipped off our tongues.

Before I begin this poem.
An hour of silence for El Salvador ...
An afternoon of silence for Nicaragua ...
Two days of silence for the Guatemaltecos ...
None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years.
45 seconds of silence for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas
25 years of silence for the hundred million Africans who found
their graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could
poke into the sky.
There will be no DNA testing or dental records to identify their remains.
And for those who were strung and swung from the heights of
sycamore trees in the south, the north, the east, and the west...

100 years of silence...
For the hundreds of millions of indigenous peoples from this half
of right here,
Whose land and lives were stolen,
In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand
Creek,
Fallen Timbers, or the Trail of Tears.
Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the
refrigerator of our consciousness ...

So you want a moment of silence?
And we are all left speechless
Our tongues snatched from our mouths
Our eyes stapled shut
A moment of silence
And the poets have all been laid to rest
The drums disintegrating into dust.

Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence
You mourn now as if the world will never be the same
And the rest of us hope to hell it won't be. Not like it always has
been.

Because this is not a 9/11 poem.
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem
This is a 1492 poem.

This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written.
And if this is a 9/11 poem, then:
This is a September 11th poem for Chile, 1971.
This is a September 12th poem for Steven Biko in South Africa,
1977.
This is a September 13th poem for the brothers at Attica Prison,
New York, 1971.
This is a September 14th poem for Somalia, 1992.
This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground in ashes
This is a poem for the 110 stories that were never told
The 110 stories that history chose not to write in textbooks
The 110 stories that CNN, BBC, The New York Times, and
Newsweek ignored.
This is a poem for interrupting this program.

And still you want a moment of silence for your dead?
We could give you lifetimes of empty:
The unmarked graves
The lost languages
The uprooted trees and histories
The dead stares on the faces of nameless children
Before I start this poem we could be silent forever
Or just long enough to hunger,
For the dust to bury us
And you would still ask us
For more of our silence.

If you want a moment of silence
Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines and the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights,
Delete the instant messages,
Derail the trains, the light rail transit.

If you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window
of Taco Bell,
And pay the workers for wages lost.
Tear down the liquor stores,
The townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses, the
Penthouses and the Playboys.

If you want a moment of silence,
Then take it
On Super Bowl Sunday,
The Fourth of July
During Dayton's 13 hour sale
Or the next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautiful
people have gathered.

You want a moment of silence
Then take it NOW,
Before this poem begins.
Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand,
In the space between bodies in embrace,
Here is your silence.
Take it.
But take it all...Don't cut in line.
Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime. But we,
Tonight we will keep right on singing...For our dead.


EMMANUEL ORTIZ
 
I was actually wondering why it's so quiet around this whole 9/11 business. Every year it's a big thing. This year so far I haven't seen anything around it yet.
 
Pitbull said:
I was actually wondering why it's so quiet around this whole 9/11 business. Every year it's a big thing. This year so far I haven't seen anything around it yet.
Click to expand...

Except for the Charlie Sheen - Barack Obama "interview".
 
gifs said:
Except for the Charlie Sheen - Barack Obama "interview".
Click to expand...

Ya, they had a nice sentiment, doubt it going to happen though.
Washington would not put Obama in such a vulnerable position especially after they know what he would say.

But i think the idea is clear, get people to actually investigate and not pick and choose what to swallow.

I liked his reference to 'Operation Northwoods' and 'The Project of the New American Century' document.
 
Over senstive Americans... worse atrocities happen everyday - they just aren't broadcast live on the news.
 
Buddha said:
http://www.piratenews.org/wtc-7-never-forget-no-plane-hit-ani.gif

That is all I can think of on this day. 8 years ago, the biggest con on the American people was pulled off. Lives were lost so that money could be made
Click to expand...

Looks like you have removed your tinfoil hat and the signals are scrambling your brain.
The real reason which you probably do know for the collapse of WTC7:
How did the collapse of WTC 7 differ from the collapses of WTC 1 and WTC 2?
WTC 7 was unlike the WTC towers in many respects. WTC 7 was a more typical tall building in the design of its structural system. It was not struck by an aircraft. The collapse of WTC 7 was caused by a single initiating event—the failure of a northeast building column brought on by fire-induced damage to the adjacent flooring system and connections—which stands in contrast to the WTC 1 and WTC 2 failures, which were brought on by multiple factors, including structural damage caused by the aircraft impact, extensive dislodgement of the sprayed fire-resistive materials or fireproofing in the impacted region, and a weakening of the steel structures created by the fires.

The fires in WTC 7 were quite different from the fires in the WTC towers. Since WTC 7 was not doused with thousands of gallons of jet fuel, large areas of any floor were not ignited simultaneously as they were in the WTC towers. Instead, separate fires in WTC 7 broke out on different floors, most notably on Floors 7 to 9 and 11 to 13. The WTC 7 fires were similar to building contents fires that have occurred in several tall buildings where the automatic sprinklers did not function or were not present.

Why did WTC 7 collapse, while no other known building in history has collapsed due to fires alone?
The collapse of WTC 7 is the first known instance of a tall building brought down primarily by uncontrolled fires. The fires in WTC 7 were similar to those that have occurred in several tall buildings where the automatic sprinklers did not function or were not present. These other buildings, including Philadelphia's One Meridian Plaza, a 38-story skyscraper that burned for 18 hours in 1991, did not collapse due to differences in the design of the structural system.

Factors contributing to WTC 7’s collapse included: the thermal expansion of building elements such as floor beams and girders, which occurred at temperatures hundreds of degrees below those typically considered in current practice for fire-resistance ratings; significant magnification of thermal expansion effects due to the long-span floors in the building; connections between structural elements that were designed to resist the vertical forces of gravity, not the thermally induced horizontal or lateral loads; and an overall structural system not designed to prevent fire-induced progressive collapse.
Click to expand...
 
za1 said:
so nice of you to be concerned about the freedom of the american people, im sure they thank you for caring..........NOT
Click to expand...

Im sure their freedoms will be realised when those in power that govern, purge themselves of their opressive methods :)
 
za1 said:
Looks like you have removed your tinfoil hat and the signals are scrambling your brain.
The real reason which you probably do know for the collapse of WTC7:
Click to expand...

ZA1.. That story about Building 7 is utter nonsense. Nobody buys that story especially not engineers and Architects.

That was a demolition, plain and simple as the nose on your face.
 
Two months of silence for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa,
Where homeland security made them aliens in their own country.
Click to expand...
What about the other people of South Africa?

This is a September 12th poem for Steven Biko in South Africa,
1977.
Click to expand...

What about the innocent women and children who died in terrorist attacks by the ANC?

*** poem... sorry
 
Fieldy said:
ZA1.. That story about Building 7 is utter nonsense. Nobody buys that story especially not engineers and Architects.

That was a demolition, plain and simple as the nose on your face.
Click to expand...

Y A W N

no it wasn't, plain and simple as the toes on your feet

now why don't you go make up an interview that could have happened with....
 
unsecluded said:
A MOMENT OF SILENCE, BEFORE I START THIS POEM



Before I start this poem, I'd like to ask you to join me
In a moment of silence
In honor of those who died in the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon last September 11th.
I would also like to ask you
To offer up a moment of silence
For all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned,
disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes,
For the victims in both Afghanistan and the U.S.

And if I could just add one more thing...
A full day of silence
For the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the
hands of U.S.-backed Israeli
forces over decades of occupation.
Six months of silence for the million and-a-half Iraqi people,
mostly children, who have died of
malnourishment or starvation as a result of an 11-year U.S.
embargo against the country.

Before I begin this poem,
Two months of silence for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa,
Where homeland security made them aliens in their own country.
Nine months of silence for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
Where death rained down and peeled back every layer of
concrete, steel, earth and skin
And the survivors went on as if alive.
A year of silence for the millions of dead in Vietnam - a people,
not a war - for those who
know a thing or two about the scent of burning fuel, their
relatives' bones buried in it, their babies born of it.
A year of silence for the dead in Cambodia and Laos, victims of
a secret war ... ssssshhhhh....
Say nothing ... we don't want them to learn that they are dead.
Two months of silence for the decades of dead in Colombia,
Whose names, like the corpses they once represented, have
piled up and slipped off our tongues.

Before I begin this poem.
An hour of silence for El Salvador ...
An afternoon of silence for Nicaragua ...
Two days of silence for the Guatemaltecos ...
None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years.
45 seconds of silence for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas
25 years of silence for the hundred million Africans who found
their graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could
poke into the sky.
There will be no DNA testing or dental records to identify their remains.
And for those who were strung and swung from the heights of
sycamore trees in the south, the north, the east, and the west...

100 years of silence...
For the hundreds of millions of indigenous peoples from this half
of right here,
Whose land and lives were stolen,
In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand
Creek,
Fallen Timbers, or the Trail of Tears.
Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the
refrigerator of our consciousness ...

So you want a moment of silence?
And we are all left speechless
Our tongues snatched from our mouths
Our eyes stapled shut
A moment of silence
And the poets have all been laid to rest
The drums disintegrating into dust.

Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence
You mourn now as if the world will never be the same
And the rest of us hope to hell it won't be. Not like it always has
been.

Because this is not a 9/11 poem.
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem
This is a 1492 poem.

This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written.
And if this is a 9/11 poem, then:
This is a September 11th poem for Chile, 1971.
This is a September 12th poem for Steven Biko in South Africa,
1977.
This is a September 13th poem for the brothers at Attica Prison,
New York, 1971.
This is a September 14th poem for Somalia, 1992.
This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground in ashes
This is a poem for the 110 stories that were never told
The 110 stories that history chose not to write in textbooks
The 110 stories that CNN, BBC, The New York Times, and
Newsweek ignored.
This is a poem for interrupting this program.

And still you want a moment of silence for your dead?
We could give you lifetimes of empty:
The unmarked graves
The lost languages
The uprooted trees and histories
The dead stares on the faces of nameless children
Before I start this poem we could be silent forever
Or just long enough to hunger,
For the dust to bury us
And you would still ask us
For more of our silence.

If you want a moment of silence
Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines and the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights,
Delete the instant messages,
Derail the trains, the light rail transit.

If you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window
of Taco Bell,
And pay the workers for wages lost.
Tear down the liquor stores,
The townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses, the
Penthouses and the Playboys.

If you want a moment of silence,
Then take it
On Super Bowl Sunday,
The Fourth of July
During Dayton's 13 hour sale
Or the next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautiful
people have gathered.

You want a moment of silence
Then take it NOW,
Before this poem begins.
Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand,
In the space between bodies in embrace,
Here is your silence.
Take it.
But take it all...Don't cut in line.
Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime. But we,
Tonight we will keep right on singing...For our dead.


EMMANUEL ORTIZ
Click to expand...

Nice...
 
JK8 said:
Nice...
Click to expand...

nice indeed

I have no problem if ppl want to use this day to remember the various atrocities man does to one another. still means the families and victims of 9/11 are entitled to mourn.
 
RetroBok

Two months of silence for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa,
Where homeland security made them aliens in their own country.
Click to expand...

What about the other people of South Africa?
Click to expand...

I think there's a context here and don't think the intention is to say there weren't others, but that blacks were the vast majority and indigenous to it.

RetroBok

This is a September 12th poem for Steven Biko in South Africa,
1977.
Click to expand...

What about the innocent women and children who died in terrorist attacks by the ANC?

*** poem... sorry
Click to expand...

violence begets violence and people only have issues when it affects them....i see you getting one of the points of the poem then ;)
 
This is why it's a **** poem, I get the sentiment but if you want to single out any one thing in SA it shouldn't be only blacks and it certainly shouldn't be Steve ****o...
 
za1 said:
nice indeed

I have no problem if ppl want to use this day to remember the various atrocities man does to one another. still means the families and victims of 9/11 are entitled to mourn.
Click to expand...

The poet is not talking about 'man', he's speaking of opressive political, economic and military regimes like the US :)

Think he's trying to emphasize how they've been a part of so much more devastation yet have the audacity to ask for a 'moments silence'
 
unsecluded said:
The poet is not talking about 'man', he's speaking of opressive political, economic and military regimes like the US :)

Think he's trying to emphasize how they've been a part of so much more devastation yet have the audacity to ask for a 'moments silence'
Click to expand...

nah, same thing..you say tomato i say tomatoe.
either way, they are still entitled to mourn 9/11
any by oppressive regimes surely you mean Iran, Saudi Barbaria etc etc

see you say tomato I say tomatoe
 
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