image borrowed from bing
Rapture
“I am often asked how do I know if my followers have reached
enlightenment. That’s easy. Every morning I count them. Those
who have left have reached enlightenment.”--Mulla Nasreddin.
At 8:46 a.m, American Airlines Flight 11, flying
at 466 mph crashed into the North Tower
between floors 93 & 99.
Jack Sailor worked hard at not losing
consciousness under that massive desk
on the 105th floor of 1WTC,
on that beautiful Tuesday morning;
the illuminated face on his golden Rolex
reminding him that 20 minutes prior
the building had sustained some kind of impact
and explosion.
Several large plate glass windows had been blown out,
acrid smoke smelling like high octane gasoline
hung like a dark choker around his neck,
his red silk tie was wrapped tight
over his burning nose and mouth.
He had just arrived at a meeting held in secret
regarding some land acquisition in New Jersey.
The last thing Bill Priestly had said jokingly,
just before his head exploded,
“Why are you eating my walnuts?”.
Some people got on their cell phones,
and there was ten kinds of yelling
about an airliner that had crashed
into the Tower below them;
the stairwells were all blocked,
evacuation appeared impossible.
The shrill screaming had continued
non-stop for 15 minutes, replaced
by unearthly wailing as squads of survivors
formed into leap-lines before throwing themselves
out of smashed windows, preferring free-falling
at 100 miles per hour to remaining
in that blazing quagmire.
Jack, always the Murid, remained low
in a fetal position, contemplating
the impossible, that somehow
it was safer to remain motionless,
but this required excessive effort
since fear tore at his body
like a ravenous tiger.
He knew he had to push himself
away from intellectualism,
had to commune with his deeper self,
reminding that entity that he was experiencing
a mystikos, that every normal aspect
of reality had been shattered,
that despite the obvious contradictions
piled up all about him, he simply
had to cling tenaciously to the overarching thesis
that he could survive if he could tune out
the deathly din and remain quiet.
He could barely visualize the 2WTC across
from him, but in a flashing moment of clarity
at exactly 9:03 a.m. he watched
United Airlines Flight 175 flying at 590 mph
crash into the face of the South Tower.
“My God,” he thought, “Dragons have attacked us,
the earth has split open and flocks of demons
have taken to the air!”
The world was wearing the blood-soaked
jet fuel-saturated cloak of a Zen koan,
there would be no answers to this riddle.
Was this the rapture, some mystical oblivion?
Were Jesus & Buddah & Krishna & Lao Tze
hovering divinely just beyond the smoke?
The air was raped again by raucous rumbling
at 9:58 a.m. as the South Tower collapsed.
He watched it hypnotically crashing
floor onto floor like a sea captain’s telescope
until it dropped out of his sight line.
His mantra, repeated at a rapid rate, was
I will survive,
I will survive,
I will survive,
staring at his Rolex as yantra,
his basest instincts blunted by chaos,
blinded by smoke and fire,
the insight came softly.
He rose to his feet.
He seemed alone.
The silence held no screaming.
His heart beat staccato in his ears
walking stiffly toward a broken window,
squinting into indifferent sunlight
struggling with his distinction
between the self and the divine.
Alas, the decision was made for him
at 10:28 a.m. as the North Tower collapsed,
and he found himself 1,300 feet in the air.
The torrents of wind seemed to hold him up
for a moment while he portrayed a falling version
of Sufi whirling, before the descention,
like Christ before him, down, down
hard to hell, mystical regression,
returning to the maternal womb,
laughing just as his body reached
terminal velocity.
Glenn Buttkus
January 2013
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