It was the dream of the end
of Western Civilization
after the final explosion …
and sinking into the crust,
the head of the Dark Man,
protruding without eyeballs
through the loam as we walk past

Ahead was one fallen skyscraper
after another in heaps of rubble,
railroads halted under metal rooftops,
hillsides of smoking garbage and ash
where we lost our shoes, lost ourselves
Some still in silk pajamas tried to fly
off ledges and found no taxi roofs
to break their fall

A simple cross rose into the sky
as the flood reached the feet
of those standing on rusted beams;
the cross became a cupid
that became a horse galloping
into some idea we once had
about a place we were going

No longer a dream,
the little ball of our thoughts
spun into snow flakes
where we danced in a circle
upside down and right side up
in a dream we begged to wake from
after the windows started shaking and
a sewer grate opened to swallow us
into the muck of wayward desire