Smothered
by Robert Cromey

September 11, 2001
On a Train to Boston

Smothered
Smothered is how I feel.
All those people smothered
To death in the debris
Of the fiery crashes
Into Building
In New York City.
Trapped and smothered
Unable to move as
The buildings sag and burst
Beneath you.

Smothered, where’s the air?
Hot stuffy then airless.
Pressure, immoveable
I’m fear’d of dyin’
Old man life keeps
Rollin’ along and
I’m here alone, dying, breathless
Smothering
Manhattan Holocaust.

The relentless news
Images, words, pictures
Fear of me smothering
In the rubble of my
Mind and memory
Especially at four in the AM
Dark, no air, pressure
I can’t move
Smothering
Smothering in the casket,
In the cremation furnace.

If my wife should die
If my daughters and grandchildren
Should die.
All those families missing
The smothered and burned in
The destroyed building.

Smother the Arabs, Palestinians
Smother them as they smothered
Our beloved ones.
Retaliate, an eye for an eye,
Thou
Shalt not kill
Revenge the loss of our
Loved ones. Vengeance is mine
Says the Bush.

How can we love enemies like that, like us?
Forgive until 70 times seven.
We get them
They’ll get us too —again.

Smothered by rhetoric and revenge.
Smothered like the Iraqis by our Army.
Airless from the air
By words and pictures.

Read a book about digging coal
Flat on his back in a
Dark tunnel three feet high.
A hundred yards long.
I choked,
Trouble breathing
Put the book down

Smothered by the image.
World Trade Center
A hundred floors
Smother those below
And below and below
Can we love enemies like that?
Can those enemies love us?

Why do they hate us so?

Jesus smothered on the cross
Jesus smothered in the grave

Maybe there’s air some Where.

Robert Warren Cromey has been rector of Trinity Church, San Francisco for 20 years. He is a founder of the Council on Religion and the Homosexual in 1964: marched in Selma: protested the Vietnam War: has performed same gender weddings since 1968; served on the Ethics Committee of the University of California Medical Center, San Francisco; and is a trustee of the General Theological Seminary, NYC from which he graduated in 1956. He has appeared on "Geraldo," "Larry King Live," and numerous talk shows throughout the nation. He wrote "In God's Image: Christian Witness to the Need for Gay/Lesbian Rights in the Eyes of the Church" in 1991. Robert can be emailed at twocromeys@earthlink.net