day THIRTEEN HUNDRED and THIRTY THREE

guy in the September 11^th t-shirt

it gets hard

to point out a true patriot these days

but the guy who just passed me was decked out

USA cap

stars’n’stripes bandana

coming out of the back

of his jean pocket

he’s a regular uncle sam

he even had on his 9/11 t-shirt

a crisp white cotton

with the words written blood red

WE WILL NEVER FORGET

there was a cartoon image

of the manhattan skyline on the front

i expected to see the twin towers front and center

standing erect

like two big penises

larger in legend than they ever stood in life

but instead there was just a cloud of dust

billowing up in the sky

surrounding the buildings

enveloping the island

a macabre reminder for sure

one wonders

where he got a shirt like that

why not get a t-shirt

with one of the planes ramming right in

it’s america

they must make them

i guess he wanted something

a touch more subtle

years ago

some guy in downtown

tried to sell me a flip book of 9/11

it was a think little volume

of bright, beautiful pictures

of planes smacking into buildings

of people falling out of windows

of people running for their lives

of buildings falling

it wasn’t as cool a cartoon t-shirt

but you could flip the book frontwards

and experience 9/11 as many times as you wanted

or you could get creative

flip the book backwards

and pretend that the day never happened

TEGROF REVEN LLIW EW

or something like that.

--John Grochalski