Jackson Riley - November 3,2004

out from my apartment backporch, right across the way,
separated by a sand volleyball court,
is that other building;
the one that caught on fire at 5: 30am on the very
morning W was given the Presidency,
like a present from daddy.
and the four of us living in bldg8 aptF,
were waked by a wailing alarum to
a sunrise in the west.
as the girls ran inside for their cameras, Beau and I
watched shirtless from our balcony
less than 100 yards away,
smoking cigarettes,
soaking in the most beautiful thing either of us had ever seen.
snaketongued flames rose 50feet into the morning
and the smoke seemingly floated up
to Jupiter.
we got a good 45minutes
before the fire engines came with their cambers of extirpation.
phone calls from relatives, who were watching presidential
updates and were interrupted by local news flashes
of a fire at our small college complex, made sure we were OK.
in the news, the pictures never did the fire justice,
(they prefer bodybags to bulletholes)
they only showed the building decapitatedly roofless, after the fact,
after the guillotine had fallen.
(our pictures were much better) and
down in the volleyball sand, about 100 kids were watching,
50 of whom would need a new place to live.
and, come 8: 30, the smoke had gone
the hollowed building creaked, but still stood.
and in the following several months, we watched, from our backporch,
the slow de- then re-construction of the skeleton.
and I knew that morning, on my backporch, I was about to watch
the same process with my country.

Jackson Riley

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/november-3-2004/