he saw him, the gun,
the uniform, not in a dream, but in between
sleep and wakefulness, when morning tugged
on him to start the day

while he lay, and recalled other mornings  
when his eyes would open to the same gray walls,
the same black and white visions foretelling
what he would see:

the time he saw his brother dragged
through a field, a casualty of some grand battle
only hours later to discover, he was pulled from a fire,  
a **** lab explosion, speed burned, ignoble

or one cold morning when he awakened
after a sensation of careening down a hill with others
around him screaming, and by noontide he read  
of a bus going off a cliff into the sea,

and the cursed time he sat up suddenly, drenched in sweat,
after his dream of a child singing morphed into nightmare,
a little one struck with fever; of course, his niece was rushed
to the ER an hour later, mercury reading 104

this morning was different, for it was he
he saw as vision's victim, running down a street,
cop commanding halt, and seeing himself hit the asphalt, just after
he felt a thud--just before the world returned to black