09/11/2026
The first time I wrote the words Black Powder Red Earth was the day after 9-11. Looking across the Hudson at a pillar of smoke, people held lighters up at dusk and sang God Bless America so the firemen, police, and other first responders at work on the pile could hear our country rally behind them.
For days, the news replayed loops of the event and its aftermath. People jumping to their deaths from the upper floors of the towers. The dust exploding down the arteries of the city, as one tower fell and then the other. Survivors caked with cement dust and blood.
Before the war, I was an artist working in Silicon Alley. After, I would work on anything related to National Defense I could until I met Travis Haley and we eventually started Magpul Dynamics and then Haley Strategic.
The further I get from that day, the worse it feels. The casualties never stopped. Men and women I came to know taken by cancer. Others that came back from the wars only to end their own lives. But there were a select few, who became addicted to going back.
Black Powder Red Earth was their story.
I was never the same after 9-11. None of us who lived through that day and saw the towers fall would ever be.
We created this piece in 2021 for BCM. We’ve never been able to improve upon it.
#911
![[ 2027 + 2046 ] The last hundred yards, remains unchanged. The horizon burns in all directions.](https://img5.contractors1000.com/441/505/1710532474415059.jpg)
