What I Wish I Had Been Told

In May I attended my first ever poetry slam, a monthly show hosted by Slam New Orleans (who, by the way, just won the National Poetry Slam).  The show was inspiring, so much so that I decided to try my hand at it.  The following month I made my slam debut, and after that I set a goal to perform a new poem every month for the next year.  Four months later I'm still on track.

This poem is about my experience of the 11 years since the September 11th attacks.  The idea behind the poem is that I travel back in time to speak to a younger version of myself on the morning following the attacks.

Thanks for listening, and please please please offer any constructive feedback.  Transcription below.



What I wish I had been told on September 11th, 2001.

The worst nightmare is one that everyone shares
That bears its weight in the faces and backward glances of an entire city
That you escape from not by waking but by falling asleep
But this is no dream

You will witness the end of sneaking deli sandwiches into baseball games
Learn to pose crucified for intimate pat downs from impersonal hands
Prepare yourself
For red-eyed nights aboard red eye flights
And the red faces of teenage boys who want to kill the man who did this

                                              

On trips home you will ride the New York subway and notice

How people have become even more proficient at looking over their shoulders

You will gaze into the only hole on Earth that makes New Yorkers stand still

That no amount of concrete, steel, and arrogance can fill

And not for lack of trying

You will hear claims that

Today everyone is a New Yorker

And you’re going to wish it were true

Because at least then this country could put its head down, its ear buds in, and mind its own fucking business

In this new world you will ask yourself

Does it really matter if hate is in our hearts or in our actions?

Because most American Presidents have murdered more innocent people

Than Bin Laden could ever imagine

And imagine the irony

That ten years after this insurrection

We will orient our anger in the same exact direction

Lower Manhattan

And for a lot of the same reasons

Our means will be non-violent but the point is the same

There’s a culture to blame

Yet we won’t examine ourselves

But delve headfirst

Into aggressive self-denial

We’re addicted to a sense of greatness

That most of the world reviles

But what if interrupting violence doesn't start in Islamabad
But in Manhattan?

What if we demanded that our schools teach conflict resolution

So that not a single American child turned to violence as a solution?

There’s a line in the preamble of the US Constitution

That says to form a more perfect union is to promote the general welfare

That’s a challenge for us to think up our own particular ways to care

That all involve people

Small acts of love speak softly

But a million at a time can drown out the noise of evil

In this new world we’ll need to laugh at ourselves sometimes

Humility is a willingness to be your own punch line

Because if we don’t make ourselves the subjects of comedies

Then someone else will write us in as the objects of tragedies

If we don’t ask questions

Then we’re giving up on answers

If we don’t nip hate in the bud

Then it will spread like a cancer

If we’re not inspired

If we don’t light roaring bonfires

Beneath our youngest boys and girls

Then who’s going to imagine

The next new world?