Poem: What Flames May Come
In the 1980s I used to dream of nuclear holocaust, even though I lived in New Zealand. It's not so much an actual dream now, just a dull ache. A tool wants to perform the function for which it is built in the same way that water wants to run downhill. A bomb is a desire for explosion given material form. Why do we have desires that we don't want to release?
What Flames May Come
I woke from cold sleep, sweating, numb. The TV
blared a band of white noise, headlines
smashing half the screen: IT'S HAPPENED. MASSIVE -
turned it off. I knew already; saw the sky
- in dream a half hour earlier -
the purple haze of ion sheen, white flash
sears city blocks to dust. - What did you think?
I said to no-one - Internet's offline today,
routes crashed with traffic - build these
things, deploy them, they get used, people
will die. It's what we're made for. What we do.
We ache. And in the vacuum of the updraft
burn.
