Five Poems

By Robert Carroll

The following five poems are a sampling of my experience as it relates to the September 11th catastrophe and aftermath. The first poem was written before. The next three added afterwards. The last poem was written five years ago in the wake of the death of a dear friend. They are all of a piece.

Yesterday

I went to Sam's house.

He was feeling better.   

They discontinued the chemo

because of the vomiting.

It wasn't working anyway.

He said, "I can see my time is limited.

Before this I hoped for a miracle.

Now I just want to live for the time I've got.

My son's having it rough.

Yesterday he came and laid next to me in bed.

He told me it was important to just lie together."

"Yes," I said, "it's difficult for everyone,

and one thing you will have to consider is when to stop

trying to live as long as possible and to begin living

as well as you can while you're dying.

How we die is as important a part of life as any we live—

What is said, what is done, what is left undone."

He shook his head, yes. The kettle on the stove began to whistle.

He fixed me a cup of tea. We sat on the couch together.

I read him the poem I wrote about his yellow skin, and he smiled.

"How am I doing?" he asked.

"How am I doing with this dying?"

and I knew that he knew that he was doing O.K.,

but I also knew he wanted to hear it from me, so I told him so,

and he smiled again and told me how important it was that I came,

and I knew it was true because it was what there was for me to do,

and I knew I would want the same, and as I left and drove south on Lincoln,

top down on my convertible, the Los Angeles sun shining, I had errands to do

and more people to see, I felt honored and grateful, but weakened in my knees,

because I knew soon enough that he could be me.

Today

I'm flying to Tennessee.

My son Josh and I are going to visit my family—

My mother, both sisters, their husbands and my nephews.

We'll spend the weekend on the lake and play in the water,

drink alcohol, and eat more than we ought to.

Tomorrow

I want to go to the cemetery and remember the red mud

that covered the ground when they dug my father's grave.

I want to place a rock on his headstone,

lay myself down on the grass beside him,

feel the love and the longing for what was and what is not.

I want to put my arm around my mother and comfort her,

reminisce with my son about how Grandpop always knew the price of gasoline

and how he'd have been shocked that prices climbed to over two dollars a gallon

in Los Angeles, and how he'd smile when I told him it came back down

to a buck fifty, and how he'd remind me it's still less in Tennessee.

I want to shoot squirt guns with my nephews and throw stones in the lake,

pick vegetables in my mother's garden and take a walk in the woods.

I want to go to my sister's office and say hello to her staff,

drive my brother-in-law's Porsche, top down, shift into fifth.

I want to see Nancy's long- toothed smile and Daniel's sly grin

and see Matey dance, and catch up on all that we've been through,

and then on Monday, I will want to go home,

and when we arrive, be grateful to see my wife.

2 Ground Zero

I am distant,

living here in Los Angeles,

but I have family in New York and D.C.

Of course I called them first.

My cousin Bernice was on the fifty-third floor

of tower two when tower one was hit.

They began evacuating.

Bernice was there in 'ninety-three

so she knew about quick evacuation.

When they got to the twentieth floor, they heard a voice

over the loudspeaker—the building is secure;

you can return to your offices—and some did,

but not Bernice. When she got out she looked up

and saw the pieces of the World Trade Center

falling

so she turned and ran.

The black cloud was behind her.

In Oklahoma there were so many body parts,

so many corpses, but in Manhattan

there is ashes and dust

and thousands of missing.

How do we mourn the missing?

Here's what scares me.

Our Government's going to start killing again—

One hundred fifty thousand in Iraq,

a million Vietnamese,

Hiroshima, Nagasaki.

I do not want another war.

I do not want another victory.

I do not want another ground zero,

but I live in Los Angeles,

and I am distant.

3 Ketchup All Over Our Faces

Last night my family and I watched a war movie.

One guy got shot in the gut.

Red stuff poured out his mouth and covered his cheeks.

That's how Sam looked when he hemorrhaged from his stomach,

then vomited blood. He had to be admitted to the ICU.

The doctor gave him a few more weeks to live.

I saw a special on burn victims

from the World Trade Center.

The hospital was prepared for hundreds,

but only twenty-eight were brought in.

There weren't enough survivors.

Yesterday, I visited my friend Deborah.

They found her mother in the bathtub

where she'd fallen down dead, or maybe

it was the fall that killed her.

The coroner will issue a report next week.

Deborah and her Dad received visitors.

This is it. This is life,

 and now we're bombing Afghanistan.

We're bombing them with explosives and food—

smart bombs, stupid bombs, powdered milk,

bombs without feelings, tomatoes in cans.

A man looks up at the planes overhead,

and gets hit with a ton of Beef-a-Roni.

They call it humanitarian aid.

If you get clobbered with picante sauce,

is it friendly fire?

Today is different.

Today, I have to go to work

and deal with the psychotics.

Mr. Macon has been calling 9-1-1.

The nurses told me he did it twelve times.

He told the police that the Mafia was out to get him,

and he needed twenty million in small bills.

I ordered him a shot of Thorazine.

Ms. Miller's still talking to the walls.

"Listen Doctor, the walls have ears;

the demons don't sleep."

I don't know if the demons sleep.

What I do know is that people are falling.

I still see the man who leaped off the World Trade Center—

face down—a swan dive in his three piece suit.

Tonight I went ballroom dancing.

Today, I ate pancakes for lunch.

Tomorrow I'll see the man whose wife got so mad

she hit him and broke her hand.

Then she kicked him and broke two toes.

Then she hit him again and broke her other hand.

Someone's got to see the humor in this—

ketchup dripping down our cheeks, our faces red,

getting bombed with tomatoes, Beef-a-Roni, cheese,

falling into the bathtub,

breaking both of your hands,

diving out of skyscrapers.

We all have purple hearts.

Tomorrow I will see Sam again.

They transfused him, and now he's stable.

I'll go to his house, and sit with him

on the natty blue couch in his living room.

I'll meet with his son.

It's the end of his life,

and it's time to make peace

and do what's undone.

How many tomatoes

do we have to take in the face

before we hold one another?

How many tomatoes?

Ketchup all over our faces.

4 The End

So it's over.

He's dead—

drowned in his own secretions.

His heart just failed to pump the blood.

His systems backed up.

Fluid extravasated into his lungs.

In the last few minutes as his breathing labored,

you could hear the gurgling in his chest,

pink fluid bubbled out his mouth

and dripped down his cheek to the bed.

Bubbles were bursting in the crook of his neck.

His son hit a wall.

His daughter started going through the jewelry.

She was sure he had hoarded,

stolen money from them all,

and at the funeral she and her mother—his ex—

mouthed kindnesses through too thin lips,

held court, made judgments,

and counted bowed heads.

Some say we die as we live.

Some say at the end of a life

time collapses, and all things

are possible—even to forgive.

But as the clock wound down,

and the shovels full of dirt

hit the ground, and the grave

filled up, and the crowd cleared out,

I remembered his last day

when he turned his gray face away

as I sat on the natty blue living room couch.

He said, "I am going to die now."

So we helped him to his bed,

and he closed his eyes

as his family gathered around,

but he opened them up again,

and he said to us, "I'm sorry,

but I don't know how."

But his heart and his lungs

and his blood found a way,

and as the gurgling began,

he made his way out.

5 All Fall Down

I dig the earth with my hands,

claw stones with my nails,

sift ash through my fingers—

bone and tooth fragments

spread on the ground.

The rain washes down

the smoldering mass below.

Our human flesh

the caustic ash

now together

turn to soap.

Robert Carroll is a Family Psychiatrist in private practice in Los Angeles. He is Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA. He is also a poet and storyteller, and he has toured nationally as a member of The Los Angeles Performance Poetry Slam Team. He has been working with therapists and other health care professionals helping them to write their own narratives about their lives and the work we do.