09/11/2025
The Ballad of What Cannot Have Been
By Zartman Smith
September has its own menagerie of airborn critters:
city starlings,
sparrows, gulls,
even helicopters; and
our pigeons,
now the modern urban Pegasus --
all flying mascots of metropolis.
And in September,
mares are stirring in their lairs.
The beasts of night
arise and air,
take flight,
begin their predatory strike.
And once again,
again,
just as before,
The demons of the past attack.
Year twenty, in our anno diaboli.
I see the dragons swoop.
I watch them shoot
and blow their flames of rage.
The sky is slashed,
the heavens fractured,
cleft.
The hole, the void, is left
and still remains:
the world eviscerated
and bereft.
Again, I try to beat the mares
by force,
will power,
push them,
crush their hearts and all their parts,
their being,
or my own,
myself.
I vow once more that they cannot exist.� Somehow,
some way there is,
there has to be,
For this to not have happened.
September makes a swirling space
for things of wing and sky,
for gulls,
machines, and
critters that can swing and glide
in their own glorious gray and blue expanse,
an animated Air community
that we can glimpse
from bays of city malls and halls.
But then I shake,
as mares of night awake
and start to fly,
make their foray,
like Pegasus awry.
My tremor starts in churns,
before my heart
returns to hopes that ache,
but then will break and burn,
just like the shattered towers
that fell into hell
and carried those who dwelled within.
The sky shot us from clouds,
assailed us,
sniper in the heavens strafed us
with projectiles,
airplanes,
missiles made with people --
men and women,
children,
babies.
�And so we learned
the very sky betrays us.
Air and flying things
can mean we die.
�Just never look.
Don’t scan above.
Don’t lift your head.
Don’t think of blue
September is a month when people
think of flying:
ponder wings and
angels,
birds,
and flapping,
lifting off and
touching down.
They take to airplanes,
like a mythic imitation
or contagion.�But the mares,
time vandals,
now invade to seize me,
send me to the wormhole,
then they steal the air,
contaminate,
and crush my chest,
like some satanic Pegasus,
And I, for one,
can’t fly and
can’t respire at all.
Year twenty, in our anno diaboli.
�The ones inside the towers
could not get air
and took to flying,
but, no wings,
they tumbled,
and their parts were flung asunder.
Then new beings stalked
like shells with draining life,
their faces
gray of ceaseless fright,
or reddened,
raw from rains inside their eyes.
Our footholds were all gone.
Our feet could not touch earth secure.
There was no firmament.
The structures,
bridges,
streets
might shudder or
the sky might fall. �Some way there is,
there has to be,
for this to not have happened.
In September daytime,
city birds lead
choruses of chirping,
honks and t***s,
the streets alive
with rumbling grinds
and rubs that tickle,
thrill,
but also purr and hum
in reassuring, ready crisis.
Sirens
pulse and wail
like city loon songs,
trolling aid and rescue,
urban music,
arias of hope and succor,
even comfort.
But the mares of night now
come in sun,
and raid,
like Pegasus debased,
depraved.
They start with daytime buzz.
Mosquitoes of the soul, they swarm,
with urgent, fiery shrill crescendos,
then trepan my skull
and suck,
collapse me to my horror.
The screeching sirens,
horns that moaned,
inflamed
and burned my ears.
They churned and roared.
They bore and tore my core,
alarms that shrieked,
percussive drones,
like screams ...
unheard,
like screams...
not screamed...
yet heard.
And peace to come was ceased.
Serenity was crushed,
as piercings
drilled and filled all space around.
I cover up my ears.
I try to close them
and just amputate the sound.
September makes the buildings come alive. � The concrete shimmers in its awe.
They rise in vertical display.
They venerate and point,
like churches,
to the heavens.
They’re true dwellers of the city.
But I’m sucked into
the past,
the happened, � and the maybe,
as the mares,
sky riders,
shoot me down from
now,
the present,
kidnap me.
I cannot hold in present time
and stay.
Our trusted pegasus
betrays
and drags me back to then.
In now, year twenty, in our anno diaboli.
The towers,
city’s pride,
the steeples,
pierced and wounded,
dripping viscera,
they cracked and swallowed up themselves,
became mere rocks and detritus.
�Now time itself is cleaved,
the future
shattered, � scattered,
broken,
all the years reset, � and counted all anew.
� Some way there is,
there has to be,
For this to not have happened.
In September eager gnomes of industry do
scurry,
scramble,
zig and zag,
in frenzied dances of production,
as they snort and pant
in fervor or in agitation.
�But the mares proliferate --
now sharp, metallic monsters,
artifacts unholy,
crafted,
flying beasts of iron,
spawned like Pegasus
from hell.
And they blew toxin,
fumes of fire and
dust of fallen structures pulverized,
and gas of burning flesh.
They stole our air,
they smothered us,
they choked us,
poisoned us with particles of death.
And we could only try to breathe,
when air itself contained the smoke,
the gas,
the dragon’s breath.��In September
I’m a beaver, building dams
to hold the pool of pain,
contain the tears,
the lacrimal monsoon.
I try constructing d***s
with tiny strings of hope and numbness,
But the threads unravel
when the mares return to swarm,
stampeding in their airborne war dance.
They say, to send the mares away,
eyeball the truth.
The truth will trap the mares
in time that’s past,
in history,
the truth with all its tears and fears.
Just stare it down and mourn.
The open wound will close,
a scar,
but healed.
Look at the truth,
they say.
But they do not say how.
Now year twenty, in our anno diaboli.
I don’t know how to say,
to know,
it was,
it’s true,
it happened,
it transpired,
and not turn into stone.
Our weeping,
can it ever be enough?
How can we say
that this was real?
They say meet the truth
and face it,
mourn and grieve
and grieve and mourn,
but then how can one do this
when there’s so much loss,
but more than loss,
the shock,
the terror,
and the helpless rage?
And how to face the face of evil?
We don’t have tears enough to weep
for those inside the buildings,
and for those inside the airplanes,
and for those who came to rescue,
and for those whose body parts
remain unknown.
How we can say,
it was,
it’s true,
it happened
And then not melt into a formless clay
or petrify to rock?
Just how can we accept that this transpired?
How we can we gaze at this,
when all our veins will surely dessicate?
We don’t have tears enough to weep
for those who loved them,
and for those who came to help
and for their families.
How can one say and know
that this was real,
How can we say this was a fact?
How can we now look
when looking means
we will be numbed and freeze?
So instead, I say,
let’s find the way
for this to not have happened
We don’t have tears enough to weep
for those who saw it all and watched it change,
all changed,
the city,
skyline,
sky itself,
the air,
the ground,
How can we come to face this
in our flesh,
our essence,
as ourselves,
when we will surely fade and wither
into phantoms,
into shadows?
Year twenty, in our anno diaboli.
Tell me how to fathom
something that cannot be fathomed?
But I can say
that there’s some way,
there has to be,
For this to not have happened.
September changed it all,
it twisted time,
deformed it
from the way it was
to how it is,
Now time forever changed,
all changed.
And, then the love and trust for fellow man,
no more presumed,
as we have seen intention
in the terror,
loss,
and pain to innocents.
So we must manage hate within ourselves.
And we, ourselves, are changed, forever.
How can we face this?
But no answer has been given.
No one gives an answer.
No one tells us what the answer is.
No one tells us.
No one has an answer.
No one knows the answer.
No one knows.
No one knows.
