Best 9-11 related writing I ever heard came out of Ani Difranco.

It's a song. But also a poem.

Yes, Us people are just poems We're ninety percent metaphor With a leanness of meaning Approaching hyper-distillation And once upon a time We were moonshine Rushing down the throat of a giraffe Yes, rushing down the long hall Despite what the p.a. announcement says Yes, rushing down the long hall Rushing down the long stairs In a building so tall It will always be there It's part of a pair There on the bow of Noah's ark The most prestigious couple Just kickin' back parked Against a perfectly blue sky On a morning beatific In its Indian summer breeze On the day that America fell to its knees After strutting around for a century Without saying thank you, or please

And the shock was subsonic The smoke was deafening Between the setup and the punch line Cause we were all on time for work that day We all boarded that plane to fly And while the fires were raging We all climbed on the window sill Held hands And jumped into the sky And every borough looked up when it heard the first blast And every dumb action movie was summarily surpassed And the exodus uptown by foot and motorcar Looked more like war than anything I've seen so far So far So fierce and ingenious A poetic specter so far gone That every jackass newscaster was struck dumb and stumbling Over 'oh my god' and 'this is unbelievable' and on and on And I'll tell you what, while we're at it You can keep the pentagon Keep the propaganda Keep each and every tv That's been trying to convince me To participate In some prep school punk's plan to perpetuate retribution Perpetuate retribution Even as the blue toxic smoke of our lesson in retribution Is still hanging in the air And there's ash on our shoes And there's ash in our hair And there's a fine silt on every mantle From Brooklyn to Hell's Kitchen And the streets are full of stories Sudden twists and near misses And soon every open bar is crammed to the rafters With tales of narrowly averted disasters And the whiskey is flowin' Like never before As all over the country Folks just shake their heads And pour

So here's a toast to all the folks that live in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, El Salvador Here's a toast to the folks living on the pine ridge reservation Under the stone cold gaze of Mt. Rushmore Here's a toast to all those nurses and doctors Who daily provide women with a choice Who stand down a threat the size of Oklahoma City Just to listen to a young woman's voice Here's a toast to all the folks on death row right now Awaiting the executioner's guillotine Who are shackled there with dread and can only escape into their heads To find peace in the form of a dream, peace in the form of a dream

Cause take away our PlayStations And we are a third world nation Under the thumb of some blue blood royal son Who stole the oval office and that phony election I mean It don't take a weatherman To look around and see the weather Jeb said he'd deliver Florida, folks And boy did he ever And we hold these truths to be self evident: Number one, George W. Bush is not president Number two, America is not a true democracy Number three, the media is not fooling me Cause I am a poem heeding hyper-distillation I've got no room for a lie so verbose I'm looking out over my whole human family And I'm raising my glass in a toast Here's to our last drink of fossil fuels May we vow to get off of this sauce Shoo away the swarms of commuter planes And find that train ticket we lost Cause once upon a time the line followed the river And peeked into all the backyards And the laundry was waving The graffiti was teasing us From brick walls and bridges We were rolling over ridges Through valleys Under stars I dream of touring like Duke Ellington In my own railroad car I dream of waiting on the tall blond wooden benches In a grand station aglow with grace And then standing out on the platform And feeling the air on my face Give back the night its distant whistle Give the darkness back its soul Give the big oil companies the finger finally And relearn how to rock-n-roll Yes, the lessons are all around us and the truth is waiting there So it's time to pick through the rubble, clean the streets And clear the air Get our government to pull its big dick out of the sand Of someone else's desert Put it back in its pants And quit the hypocritical chants of Freedom forever Cause when one lone phone rang In two thousand and one At ten after nine On nine one one Which is the number we all called When that lone phone rang right off the wall Right off our desk and down the long hall Down the long stairs In a building so tall That the whole world turned Just to watch it fall And while we're at it Remember the first time around? The bomb? The Ryder truck? The parking garage? The princess that didn't even feel the pea? Remember joking around in our apartment on Avenue D? Can you imagine how many paper coffee cups would have to change their design Following a fantastical reversal of the New York skyline?! It was a joke At the time And that was just a few years ago So let the record show That the FBI was all over that case That the plot was obvious and in everybody's face And scoping that scene Religiously The CIA Or is it KGB? Committing countless crimes against humanity With this kind of eventuality As its excuse For abuse after expensive abuse And it didn't have a clue Look, another window to see through Way up here On the hundredth and fourth floor Look Another key Another door Ten percent literal Ninety percent metaphor Three thousand some poems disguised as people On an almost too perfect day Must be more than pawns In some asshole's passion play So now it's your job And it's my job To make it that way To make sure they didn't die in vain Ssh Baby listen Hear the train?