The Taste of Fear by Spencer Slater

Is this how he died?
Did he taste the fear?
Did the screams of 9/11
Pour through his ears?
Did his last moments
Make him think of that time?
Did it spark some reaction
From his revenge-crazed mind

(Swirling smoke, cannot breathe, cannot run fast enough
The heat of the fire that burns all of us)

Death at his heels
He falls to the ground
The click of the rifle
The executioner’s sound
Echoes through the room
From the east to the west
The poison of jihad
Pours from his head

(seering pain, cannot breathe, the choking on dust
The towers are falling, are falling on us)

Ground Zero the legacy
To remind us who died
On that bright September day
When the heat of the fire
Stoked all our fears
And the flames inside

(the searching, the tears, the debris and dust, the images of a day that haunts
all of us)

And did he taste the fear?
When he heard the first shot
Like the fears of the victims
Of the planes when they crashed
And when the second bullet hit
He wouldn’t have heard a sound
And like the twin towers he fell to the ground.

( the searching, the tears, the debris and dust, the hiding is over…he could not run far enough)

Spencer Slater © 2011

~

More Poetry from Spencer Slater:

A Bedtime Story

The Antiquarian

The Remnants Of The Evening

The White Room