Hymie's Basement: Bolts and Hands

Lights flash in like camera angles on the planned-for symmetry of city streets and sidewalks,
Country-road vistas and two-lane highways narrowing into morning’s tree-lined mist,
Where the sunrise speaks East in barely audible whispers,
Softer than a white-coated kitten’s whiskers
And the light of a coffee-table candle’s flicker,
Written faintly on the walls like a suicide note for mom
When she finally gets home from work:
“I love you all,
But the world can go on and kill itself
For all
I care.”
And then she can share in a good cry, weeping with dad over the why
Of a mother’s spilled milk—
Why?—
Across the kitchen floor before the last bomb hits
With the strike of a match
And the first chord of some distant angel’s harmonic
Pluck
On a harp’s radiant string,
Striking us all still and dumb,
Though not unknowing of this eschaton,
Prophesied by the saddest children of sadder men.