from Apocalypse Dreams
it’s the end the end of the city end

of your city which is also a country

ending at stake the city on shut down

the city a military zone full of vigilantes

we hide everyone hides hard to tell who

might be hiding to hurt and to stay still

it feels like happening ending hiding

is utterly inadequate I am scared


in a back room perhaps 20 bodies

in black face down with backpacks

are these military forces or civilian

why did they die so odd flip one

over and not people but preparation

packs for people jumpsuits with back

packs attached provisions where are

the people to fill them why my mistake 


because I am scared and seeing is

so many things I’ve never seen

before or want to again that the

incredible is not a category now

but a present feeling end of this

moment into the next too fast

for surprise a young girl relieved

to find a group of people dressed

as fierce military birds why is she

smiling they are smiling it is not 


I look away I know what will now

happen to the smiling girl and do

not want to see when the moment

she thinks she is in becomes another

she will panic I would panic I am

watching this from safety and I

turn away glad of safety and sick

does she scream I cannot tell

always there is screaming somewhere

now it is the end of the city the end 


a waterfall of effluence tumbling

people with everything else how

far it can fall off the edge of this

city as I watch I see people grasp

autonomy in face of the end for

some are surfing if I could feel

incredulity I would have first when

I saw people dying in this water

can it be fun to surf before you die

in sewage washed to the end the

is it hope or embrace or mastery it is

the end of the fall the pool I cannot see


with others on a boat a man is stitching

my hand I understand I am a refugee with

other refugees that I am hurt and he is help

yet he pricks my hand first in the palm to

test I do not know I know the sharpness

it hurts and the stitching continues the hurt

I cannot speak Spanish the comfort of English

is a stupidity I cannot resist with the stitcher

I feel safe but he hurts me he does not need to

it feels like after the end there are no boats in

the city this is a boat not in the city is there an

end of the city of the boat of the river will it end

in sea in spring in city when the end does not stop

ending and the present stretches the ending out