Vive le Real Estate

The latest plans have been unveiled

each looking rather like the next,

laid out with the latest virtual magic,

accompanied by awestruck text.

A tower pointy like a spire,

towers shaped like DNA,

towers just a little higher

than before as though to say,

"So there!  We've risen from the ashes.

See the triumph of our will.

Here are trees 'cause people want 'em

and culture so they can have their fill.

Here's the hollow, hallowed ground,

reminder of that dreadful hole,

with space for the Memorial,

Wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole."

But doesn't all this miss the point?
This tit for tat, bigger and better

tribute to both God and Mammon,

for poor as well as the gogetter.

After all, what were Al Qaeda

really interested in?
Not Jews or Palestine for sure

nor our blithe disregard of sin.

It wasn't money that they wanted.

Who has more than Mr. Bin Laden?
The underlying deep object

of their jihad is selfrespect.

The attack was not about the wheeling

and dealing in those palaces.

The towers stood for something else:
Hundred storey phalluses.

I feel obliged then, to point out,

and more, to bitterly bemoan,

the carte blanche, the free-wheeling ride

that this world gives testosterone.

We cannot afford to let

this struggle go on any longer.

It will surely do us in

as each side proves itself the stronger.

For the mess this world is in

there surely are no simple cures

but it would help if we would stop

needing to prove, "Mine's bigger than yours."

Jenna Orkin

WTC Environmental Organization