Avenue of the Americas

The broken dream of reason
Arises without sleeping,
Shuffles into the kitchen
To make tea after three in
The morning with the vision,
Relentlessly repeating,
Of mass incineration,
The spine-crushing of buildings
Too enormous to fathom.
The empire of the Titans

Falls to graveyard of ruin,
Then the brain replays again,
Like the day’s television,
Each incendiary plane
Knifing into towers,
Orange thunderheads of flame
Portending unholy doom,
The hysterical collapse
And the mass, collective scream
All along Sixth Avenue.

A fitful America,
The once slumbering giant,
Stumbles into the bathroom,
Checks his face in the mirror,
Then disappears down a hall,
A corridor like a tomb’s,
To a room filled with darkness,
Lies sleepless till the morning
Of more televised carnage,
Dawn’s offering of a new

History of the future.