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