Story Behind the Song
Thoughts about recent tragedy and the loss of loved ones
Lyrics
Dark Stairways 9-11-01
We can't believe this is home?
Fiction is fact
and there really are dark eyed boogiemen.
How ironic to run from an image that looks so much like me.
Almond eyes glow black,
henna hair flames as F-16s fly by
like days in the Middle East,
Haj, Hammas, Jihad, and an eye for an eye.
Who is really to blame?
Newscasters show images of Satan
dark curls and gutra
dancing in flames,
leaping up from the depths of the World Trade Center ash.
Black Tuesday
sirens sound
e-mails race from coast to coast.
Most of us think…another sick American joke:
King Kong Lives,
Independence Day II,
the e-Bay plague,
so we click delete.
Then the media images,
memories are to be made,
and President Bush calls it,
"The New War on America."
How new is it?
freedom has a price
paid in blood,
black gold,
and Generation X
grows up,
or have we died?
I pour some more wine
hoping to rave my way out of this place
but this is not a war on foreign soil
and I can't find the strength to hate this place I love.
I light a candle to remember
thousands of people kissing babies
good-bye over Cheerios and coffee.
Barney sings, "I love you, you love me"
for the last time.
The stairway is black,
dark like my heart
One Hundred and Ten stories above New York
and a Million floors below
epiphanies.
I watch the news,
heroes sifting through rubble,
the building blocks of safety
smashed to pebbles.
The stairway is dark
and I have no idea
which way I am supposed
to go.
Valerie Kelly
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