9:02 on flight 182

A one eighty-two, Lindbergh tower
Traffic twelve o'clock, one mile, a Cessna
Okay we had it there a minute ago
One eighty-two, roger
I think he's passed off to our right
How far you gonna to take your downwind one eighty-two?
Company traffic is waiting for departure
Probably about three to four miles
Okay
PSA one eighty-two, cleared to land
One eighty-two's cleared to land

Tower, we're going down, this is PSA
Okay, we'll call the equipment for ya

It is September twenty-fifth of nineteen seventy eight
Though just eleven years old, I won't forget the date
Can't forget the date
Just an American morning, I'm a kid in class
Suddenly and horribly, a massive crash

To the windows every one of us, we jump and run, we jump and run
And witness the disaster that has just begun, has just begun
A little Cessna we see falling - like a leaf it's spinning 'round
And a 727's streaking right to the ground

The passenger jet is spewing fire and smoke
Not a single soul aboard believes there's any hope
Not a single hope
45 degrees downward, and 50 to the right
The plane is headed toward the earth at the speed of flight

Not a few seconds have happened since horizon ate the plane
I see a mushroom cloud arise, the black smoke signals pain
Just a mile away in the direction of my home
If it landed on my house or not is one of the unknowns

144 people have just died where I live
At 9:02 on Flight 182
When a 727 and a 172
Managed to miss each other's field of view

A hot day has turned to hell
A horror I can't unsee
Forever in my memory
Major, a massive scale
Disaster, has come to me
The landing ends in tragedy

Superman was screaming when he lost his head
Not until he hit the car was he finally dead
Another man found in a kitchen still buckled in
But most are mutilated beyond recognition
As if a butcher shop exploded all that it could
Human flesh and organs strewn about the neighborhood
Ten thousand three hundred, the body parts that were ripped
Every one of them was bagged and tagged, zipped and shipped

Then the spattered blood on stuccoed homes turned brown that afternoon
And flesh and clothing in the trees remained past evening's Moon
Though now more than three decades past the friendly skies aflame
The impact on my outlook formed the man that I became

144 people had died where I lived
At 9:02 on Flight 182
When a 727 and a 172
Managed to miss each other's field of view

Wreckage of the Cessna landed just down the street
From where I lived there on Polk Avenue
500 yards away the carnage of unspeakable gore
Left my mind forever twisted askew