[Newspoetry] Shit

[Scott Rettberg]

Thoughts on a defining terrorist incident
(or rather surrounded by said incident)

How many people said "Shit" simultaneously?

I have heard it in news rebroadcasts more times that I can count.

Also, can shit truly be holy, and furthermore how and why does one fuck
said blessed feces.

Can I safely admit that I have felt like a piece of shit
watching this news and even now feel inadequate to the task of
documenting it for the purposes of history or even a dozen or so
Poets?

When will it be safe to make fun of the president again?

Look I nearly wept when I saw him nearly weep and I'll admit he popped up a
couple points in my approval rating of him when he nearly wept. But he's
still only at like twelve in my book and this doesn't change the fact that
he wasn't elected.

Peter Jennings also told me today (alright I've been living with Peter,
prefer him to Tom Brokaw Ted Koppel and what's his name the other trusted
anchor we flip to) that neither was Hitler, that's another common
misconception, during a broadcast of the "Ultimate Power" episode of "The
Century" (a programming decision to ease us back to regular fare from the
news by reminding us of previous wars or not to watch TV).

Not to make that comparison. Shit. Completely unfair. I mean I'm pulling for
W. The dub. The big guy. Our surrogate father. Our commander in chief. At
least when he's feeling moved to tears I mean, you gotta sympathize.

Five thousand people dead.

What a worthless lot of self-indulgent . . . crap writers are.

Well I am. Shit.

I could tell that the sitcoms would be back soon when the media, having gone
through politicians military experts analysts men and women on the street
bereaved rescue workers clergy talk show hosts experts of every stripe wonks
of all varieties finally exhausted turned to . . . novelists and poets.

Poet Maya Angelou, with her simple message of patience and tolerance, kicked
the shit out of Jonathan Franzen, who is the big book enfant terrible du
jour. Franzen almost earned my respect when he said that he couldn't
understand why Bush's approval rating shot up, when he, Franzen, wouldn't
vote for B . . . But then Koppel I think cut him off and he Franzen just
didn't have the fortitude to follow through to stay on track and point out
that ninety percent seems just a little hi . . . Shellshocked he said he'd
realized that it wasn't just a New York tragedy that it extended to the
Tri-State area, you know, New Jersey and Connecticut have suffered as well.
Duh, you fucking moron, it's an international thing, I think Koppel said
without saying it that way exactly, rational Koppel pointed out the obvious,
sentimented that people are hurting in Panama and Pakistan over this thing
too. Newscaster kicking the living shit out of novelist. Rhetorically. Body
slamming brain boy. Then Franzen said he didn't think people were angry he
thought they somber. Shit. Koppel's tearing our boy apart. Of course they're
angry amigo. Just look at those drunken morons in the cowboy hats honking
horns shouting U S A their patriotism reduced to three syllables punctuated
by racist epithets directed against Muslims. Pride goeth before . . . Seen
this before . . . Yeah they're angry and the psychiatrist from Oklahoma City
who was on just before this segment said it was healthy, anger, that the
direction of the anger was the problem . . . Jesus fucking shit, I mean . .
. Somber sure but now they're coming out of the shock and boy look out for a
bunch of pissed off yankee doodles wrapping themselves in flags. Thank God
for Angelou who just quietly disagreed and then took the opportunity to
encourage Americans not to be stupid and tear each other apart because we
are a stupid racist jingoistic melting pot that tends to start doing even
stupider things shortly after wrapping each in the American flag. But anyway
Franzen I think failed with his TV appearance in terms of sure he's a fine
writer I'm sure but didn't cut the mustard as a national spokesman where's
Walt Whitman when you need him and now I'm sure as hell not going to rush
out to buy his novel The Corrections. Though I will rent the movie. Plus he
was dressed too nicely for a fiction writer, he had on this Italian designer
jacket and slick yellow tie where's Thomas Pynchon when you need him? Even
David Foster Wallace in a star spangled bandana would have been more
dignified.

Daniel Pinkwater read from a children's book on NPR that had almost nothing
to do with any of this and that nearly moved me to tears. Cheers, Pinkwater.

Adam Gopnik was good, good. He had some good things to say about the bubble
around New York which had been pierced and how it was like the gleaming
decade of the nineties was finally ultimately over and how that mythical New
York had ended and how the New York that he and Charlie Rose lived in was
revealed not to be the real New York which was that the firefighters lived
in and how much he loved but at the same time was revolted by the priveleged
life that he led surrounded by intellectuals and the city of Oz was no more
was his sense that there's a kind naivety in decadence that now was bloodied
and he had one of those nervous New York ticks he scratched absenetly
intently at his neck the whole time he was talking. He was authentic and you
could tell he was thinking intensely very intensely nervously but
authentically about what he was saying and that his world had suddenly very
drastically changed and I don't know for a minute I wanted to be one his
friends at a cocktail party at Plimpton's or something. Gopnik. I'm going to
buy a New Yorker just to read his piece.

King Kong was on the Empire State building in the first version.

He was swinging from the WTC towers in the remake.

Later this evening Oprah will be on to discuss spirit and to explain how to
explain it to the kids.

So anyway I confess I learned to love New York over the last couple years
lucky enough to sample from their bubble culture, a place where people eat
salmon on salted bagels and have like fifty different salads to choose from
at every corner deli and its common to see people reading fat Russian novels
on the train. What a wonderful place to be a drunken writer, people have
opinions in paragraphs there and the lore in Brooklyn bars stretches back
centuries. Makes Chicago feel safe but slower, less written about, less
storied of a place.

Cardboard cutters.

Can you imagine?

Who wants to be a hero?

Would you?

Can you imagine?

Four months ago nearly to the day after a meeting in Battery Park apartments
with Ron Sukenick and Mark Amerika, like our great nation but with a K,
Talan Memmott, Alan Sondheim, Azur and I, thoughts confused and heavy with
alternative ebook publishing models based on a zero labor distributed
network model walked through the lobby of the WTC after spending some time
out on the pier where several three hundred plus foot yachts with full
complements of crew in red Polo sweaters just basking in the wealth of it
all were anchored. Man they were proud of that boat they could have been
magazine models. I remember commenting that security didn't seem that tight
at the WTC. Azur jumped up and slapped a marble beam. Alan commented that
the security was there but invisible, corporate. It was all gleaming. And
Azur was proud of the WTC and at the same time disgusted with it. Gleaming.
Solid. Polished marble. City in a city. Gilded heart.

Right. Nothing to do with nothing. Excuse me. Forgive me. Pardon me.

Shit.

None of those people even those who were pieces of shit, even those who
ultimately collected the interest and the late fees on my credit cards, even
those who snorted cocaine in the bathroom stall and then went back to their
desks to break up companies and exploit third world labor, none of those
people deserve to be dead.

Repeated like a mantra.

Two hijacked planes have hit the World Trade Center. Both towers have
collapsed. Another plane has hit the Pentagon.

For days on end the same information with new variants.

Two hijacked planes have struck the World Trade Center. Both towers have
collapsed. Another plane has exploded the Pentagon.

The images are already millions of words in front the words.

Holy shit.

What a decade the 90's have ended.

And now the war. 

Shit. 

Every terrorist we kill will have two brothers and they will be as angry and
motivated as every family severed by the blast. All of the examples are laid
out before us and if you think our response has not been predicted, has not
been orchestrated by the "they" who planned it then you're only smoking
yourself out. Hunting yourself down.

Afghanistan, bordering Pakistan, bordering Iran, bordering Turkmenistan,
bordering Uzebekistan, bordering Tajikistan. Learn the names. Kabul, Qalat,
Kandahar, Rudbaf, Farah, Herat, Chaghchara, Meymaneh, Mazar-e Sharif, Pol-e
Khomri. Names the Russians knew while the CIA was training warlords who
became Taliban who harbor terrorists. Laden with grief.

The rhetoric shifts so quickly from mourning to vengeance.

Cycles that once started won't stop.

I have not hung a flag on my antenna and already my car looks out of place
on the street.

Blood prideful wants blood and will share it only with blood and will answer
it with blood, which will demand its price in blood that will respond with
blood that will sneak in an opportunity for blood that needs blood to be
spilled on top of the blood. And you will cry over it, spilt.

You will hear some of their names but not know them. Other names you will
never even hear but know by number alone.

Blood.

Written on the walls.

I will be worthless both to you and for you to help and to stop you.

To pause.

There will be a moment though when we all stop, united, for one silent
moment and look to the sky.

And we will say the same thing, and we will say it together.

Shit.