Acrid, The Taste of Rage

Acrid, the choking smell of smoldering destruction.
Bitter, this stench an incense wrought by hate.
Putrid, the cloying taste of pulverized cement
Windmixed with incinerated  human thousands.

Immolated innocents, workers of eighty nations,
Vaporized  because they were together
One September day in one famous place
When only hate a watch was keeping.

Mounds of twisted steel and crumbled stone
Memorialize their fearful source:  rage.
But swirling acrid clouds carry away
Family, works, love and beauty.

first published in Poets of The Vineyard

also published in Hoopeston Chronicle News

also published in GLORY IN THE ORDINARY Chapbook