Mesmeric - it seems that way for all the grand disasters even smaller ones; some stop to stare helpless, curious, maybe morbid conceivably seeking catharsis of Greek tragedy second-hand escapes, rescue, injury, death by proxy purging fear and pity relief too that the mortal blow passed by - this time As a child I saw wild fires tear through the bush hurricanes, earthquakes, whirlpools and favourite of all were the glowing laval flows with their slyly snaking ways, long arms fingering far into the valleys below I'd sit, mouth agape in the warm dark cinematic womb the doctored documentary, sanitized and de-focused oblivious to the suffocations and drownings on the other side of celluloid - only the lowered safety curtain at the show's end hinted that life is not all spectacle Disasters are box-office topics, remaking the real fabricating what-ifs for hours we clutch the edge of our seats riding out a storm surge of dread and drama and after the knife-edge finale, our alarm dismissed as fiction 'The Towering Inferno' was just such a movie emergency over, lights up and we all headed home but one September, several thousands did not and in the 17 years of settled dust many more find no relief
Amaya asks us to pick a word or phrase from a previous September poem and re-work it for Poetics: On a Loop. last 9/11 I wrote a quadrille unrelated to the anniversary but from it I have taken the term ‘laval flow’ – see ‘As a Bird‘
PoetryPix 