In Fantastic Astral Disasters

************


I am a post-apocalyptic action hero
and I always survive.

Sub-consciously created, lucid crusades
leave me fighting crazy raids at
some ceremonial commencement.
First, I save my family, then,

The Girl I've Never Met gets rescued next.
She appears as always,
with placid eyes aglow and locked on

me in long ago instants now known again

in this ethereal -- High cross campus we race
ducking under chairs, blocking bullets
fired by black-clad government gunmen,
aimed exclusively at me and missing all

though actually, there are casualties -- On other nights,
post-atomic Minneapolis Uptown mobs uproarious as
arbitrary fires burn ruins from the blast.

Sprinting I spring through looters and
bound down an embankment only

to encounter a tribe of survivors circling,
enclosing some type of Tom Cruise character
who holds an anonymous hostage. Back against
a cornered wall, his escaping is impossible --

though somehow I slip past, protected by a prophecy
and now I could never die, my mission
far too important to ever fail and

I wonder what happens when I wake:



January 2008