What’s worse, the bombs falling or the bombs about to fall? I built this house with square hands. The sun might rise, or it might be replaced with a sullen, bald head. The cat’s lost in the rubble. Mother’s mouth is open, and we see her single, rotten tooth.

I dreamed that I was awake and dreaming and that the lights turned black and our poor leaky world ate it for good.

Or it might have really happened for real in real life. I don’t know.

You, the eyeless multitude, unsettle me with your lidless stares. As the dry wind sobs. But I’ll tell you what I saw. Through this bullhorn on a pole. Listen!

The place I went might have been Heaven, or it might have been Shreveport, or maybe I just got lost looking for my mother’s legs.

I walked a road of sinking bricks toward a discount warehouse off the interstate that was on fire, except the part where they measured you for men’s suits was not on fire, and within the place where they measured you for men’s suits, there was a beast with the head of a salesman and the body of a gymnast and the shins of a vice president.

There was a massage bed surrounded by a rainbow of molten steel and there was also a pit into which singing babies were hurled, and there was also a plastic mushroom you could sit on. I saw a sheep’s head larger than a satellite, its drooping eyes wept gelatinous tears and it spoke of war and dreams and breakfast.

Toadstool puddings declare themselves in the obituaries.

A voice from under a wig said that the sun shall expand and the crows will burst into flames. That all bones in all graves will rattle like buckets into which modest amounts of gravel have been poured. That the back-broke working man shall get the wind and a hi-de-ho for his busted back. That the great cities of the world shall fall apart and their bonds be worthless and the bars close early. Nails pierce the kindest hearts. Alarms ring in the night where a luminous clock tells us that it’s not now, it’s not then, or sometime, or ever.

In a barren field, someone’s shooting a sick ox. Someone’s man ain’t comin’ back, someone’s woman has split, she’s in the arms of the false-teeth collector. Bang on a metal lid. Paint the door all the bright colors you want, it’s still brown underneath.

The world is old. Don’t you feel that the world is old? The world is old and it’s ready to be broken and ground into bread. Sure, back when we were young the world never aged. Our savage ancestors grew and ate and roared and murdered and their staring bones watched a new generation do it all over again. Then some fool began writing of things that had been and things that should be. Then did Man hear his own heartbeat, and then did he invite Time to heave him out into the flea market west of Eden.

A caveman never wept beside a bottle of dwindling gin.

And as the world got its end-times kit packed, I saw sixteen wingsuited amputees and there was a raccoon and the clouds exploded with a gloosh and the armies of Sweden and Cameroon clashed in a splosion of liquid marmalade.

I saw a multitude. They didn’t weep, they didn’t war, they didn’t despair. They had things on their minds. They were catching a bus or getting to dinner on time or running low on grapes. Busy, busy, busy, they got born and they drew pictures and they got to dinner and they made plans and the plans didn’t work and then they died while devising new plans, better plans that would stomp the old plans into shit, so good were these new plans, but as I said, they died during the planning of them. Their kids said a few kind words, then they did the same.

It was important to clean the baseboards.

To pay the water bill.

To please the manager.

See the documentary.

Lock the garage.

There was blood on the Formica, there were sobs in the witchgrass, there was a red light blinking high in the air—a radio tower? Or had the 747 finally found me and begun plummeting? I was busy, anyhow.

It was important to locate the preferred pet food.

Awaken by five.

Bury our grandmother.

See a smile across the table.

Avoid thinking.

I pulled a razor from my boot and threatened the mailman. I danced backwards because the journalist was not expecting it.

It was important to breathe.

Kill.

Rate (one to five stars for cleanliness/service/quality of orgasm).

Blink.

Influence.

Freshen.

Weep.

Ever and ever and onward and endless till the end.

The multitude said: So if you really went on this steerage cruise to apocalypse city, what did you bring us? If our Creator is truly skipping town, what did he leave behind?

These things have I brought back for thee:

Wires, mountaintops, watch face, bones (belonging to pterodactyl, panda, axolotl, Questing Beast, elephant shrew, the emperor Justinian) fermions, popcorn kernels, 4 mm hex wrench, gum, nails, baobab, gravel, Tasmania, nail file, extra three commandments left on chiseling-room floor, matches, doorknob, bas-relief of Baal (chipped), small jar of wrath, Jeep battery, copy of Gideon Bible (pages highlighted, dog-eared), Kleenex, spoon, pens, old audio cassette (Scorpions: Best of Rockers ’n’ Ballads), constellation of Libra, bubble level, bullet that killed James Garfield, Tiger Balm, plutonium, Magic: The Gathering deck, rubber duck (quacks when you squeeze it), rubber Ezekiel (prophesizes when you squeeze it), primordial ooze, castanets, Sword of Righteousness.

Keys to a Volkswagen that I suspect He doesn’t own anymore.

Cool rock.

Cow egg.

Fob.

Stray raisin.

Dust.

Go, see for yourself, but if you make it across the sand, on no account come back again.

END