In Memory of 9/11
One fateful hour of horror!
And the smug safety of every shore
is shattered
The waves of live media-feeds
come crashing in
Smashing our fragile senses
with hyper-dramatic images
Dashing our turbulent emotions
against the rocks of a new reality
Symbols of the free world tumble!
At the earthquake’s epicentre
of death and destruction
Leaving nations shaking and shuddering
with rage and fear
Left to search through the rubble and ruins
where towers of pride once stood
Hoping for a miraculous rescue
of their beliefs and way of life
The world holds its breath!
As the toll of tragic loss ticks
like a time bomb
Of grief and mourning and depression
and hatred and revenge
Some desperately looking for ways
to contain the blast
Others scanning the horizon for a target
on which to explode
The war against terrorism begins!
With a campaign for the ritual slaughter
of a scape goat
And a defiant display of frustrated firepower
and propaganda sorties
Leaving in its wake a cratered moonscape
of humanitarian crises
And a minefield of cultural and religious tensions
that lie unexploded
The world has changed forever!
Forcing us to venture beyond the fortress
of our comfortable self-indulgence
Prompting us to dig deeper than the shallow well
of our cultural arrogance
Pleading with us to rise up out of the morass
of our religious intolerance
Helping, in our quest for meaning, to realise
that the enemy is within
Wayne Visser © 2017
Book
Life in Transit: Favourite Travel & Tribute Poems
This creative collection, now in its 2nd edition, brings together travel and tribute poems by Wayne Visser. The anthology pays tribute to the likes of Nelson Mandela, Maya Angelou, Barack Obama, Antoni Gaudí & Leonardo da Vinci, and reflects on travels ranging from China and South Africa to Ecuador and Russia. Life is lived in the in-between / In transit / Between coming and going / Between staying and moving on / Between here and there / And what we call home / What we call settled or contented / Is merely a resting place / A station for refuelling / A nexus for reconnecting / A junction for changing direction. Buy the paper book / Buy the e-book.
