Twin Towers

We are twin reflections of each other
Except I’m on the top
And I refuse to look down.

We are twin reflections of each other
Except I’m on the bottom
Looking up, consistently looking up.

We stand side by side
Twin towers of poverty and privilege
But only one side sees the other.

Look down any famous street
Or infamous street
And you will see us

Even if you don’t like us.

We are twin reflections of each other
Except I stand in the light
And can order the sun to shine.

We are twin reflections of each other
Except I stand in the dark
And made the moon into a friend of mine.

We are twins
Connected at the umbilical cord
Yet still full of disharmony, discord.

We are twins
Yet I stand tall at my brother’s expense.
We are twins
Yet I must crawl with a slave’s pretense.

We are twins, connected at the hipbone.
Neither one of us could exist without the other.

We are twins
The twin towers of poverty and privilege.
We stand tall, very tall. We loom large in the world.
We find our way to, and take over, your consciousness.
We hold the world in sway.

Oh, look, a plane is coming our way.

Come, plane, come.
We are the twin towers of poverty and privilege.
And there is nothing permanent
that one plane, two planes, three planes, four can do to us.

Our physical structure can be tortured.
The steel that holds us can be made to scream.
People can go blind from the ash of our physical destruction.
People can die from the heaviness of us falling on them
But once the wind clears the ash, once time has silenced the cries
And the mourning colors are no longer worn
We will be rebuilt even higher than before.

We won’t be rebuilt as ourselves, twins.
We will be rebuilt as a single monument to
The twin towers of poverty and privilege.
And we will stand even taller
And loom even larger
And find more and more insidious ways
To take over your consciousness
and continue to hold the world in sway.