Something wicked this way comes;  
incensed, ravenous beasts,  
matricidal, snarling hordes.  
Invasive species, apex predator.  
We never had a chance.  
    
Monuments of blood and stone  
reaching up to the heavens in towers,  
each of their dens its own Babel.  
Expand out, they cry. Build up. Dig down.  
Rip out its heart and throw it into the fires!  
Use its energies to feed the war machines!  
Cut everything in two!  
Break the bones, drink the marrow, split the essence!  
    
But entropy ran out; expansion gave way to collapse.  
The process reversed;  
their emptied mines filled up with corpses,  
drained lakes drunk with blood,  
all their great sanguine works collapsing.  
    
And now it comes down to you.  
Stand among the ashes of seven billion souls,  
your brothers and sisters turned to dust,  
cast your Ozymandian eye over the sands,  
and tell me it was worth it.

A sudden spark in the darkness;  
the Old Man raises his head.  
Planes,  
he murmurs,  
I flew planes once.  
His vision drifts through me to  
four Vietnamese pilots buried  
in his memory and his sickness.  
Planes,  
he repeats.  

His eyes go dark again,  
twin contrails spread by the wind,  
falling apart in the empty air
of dementia.

Wheels throwing dust and grit,
Engine a mechanized roar,
I drove out into the desert.

I don’t really know what I was searching for;
The horizon, maybe,
Or a full helping of emptiness,
Something I couldn’t quite touch.

I wanted a fistful of the intangible, really,
Chasing ghosts out West,
Hunting for the tattered remains of the American Dream.

Somewhere past Phoenix, empty tank and heavy heart,
I looked up at the night sky and saw what I wanted,
Amid the sand and the stars, cool beneath the desert moon,
I discovered freedom and revelation.

Her face is a grimace,
Concentrating on coffee, not looking up.
I don’t know her name,
But a lock of hair falls free,
Drifting down from the heavens of a loose ponytail,
Landing oh-so-softly on her delicate cheek.
What I would not give to brush it back into place!
But instead I just take my mocha and walk outside,
One heartbreak heavier.

She is the catalyst that makes my atoms split,
Fission in my blood, full of energy and heat.
And though I don't know my location or velocity,
I'm certain that I'm falling,
Trying to reach a grounded state
And form a bond.

His skin is desert sand and ashes,
Eyes breaking through like rocks.
Every heartbeat is a ******'s shot,
A double report echoing in the mountains of his chest.
His breath is mortar fire,
Explosive in the desert night.
His blood flows thick and dark like oil,
Driving the war machine ever forward.