End times:

I walk among chrome and glass structures thrown up

by men who thought security could be measured

and preserved. Men with walkie-talkies, immobile

in off-the-rack blazers with company logos,

stand, arms crossed, by their doors. Waiting

for the man with the plastic suitcase, or

the ravaged derelict to careen in, staggering

in hunger or drunkenness and loudly mumbling.

They can deal with every apocalypse, wholesale.

Millennial times are not in essence despairing

or chaotic: we forced this onto ourselves.

The man driving the truck wants to be your assassin.

The man next to you has a pack full of sarin.

The man waving the Bible wants to warn you

of a terror he can't understand, terror

beyond Peter and Paul and all the apolstles.

My briefcase has not been out of my sight

since I entered the airport; tracks have etched

themselves in my fingers from gripping. Industrial

carpet, small trucks, and somewhere a hum whispers:

Disaster. Military weapons in rural shacks, waiting to

spit lead at phantasmic black helicopters

never seen but felt to exist, as necessary

a truth as fluorine and oxygen combining

explosively. And what do you see, going home?

Your face is reflected in glass and in chrome.

Why do you think you are safe even here?

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