Winter Carnival (Lights Out)

Out beyond the clouds, satellites broadcast images 
back to earth.

Voices are heard beneath the whirring of an invisible engine.

Arguments are made. 
Like a lost truth, or a dismissed dream, words are forgotten.

The winter carnival is over. The Ferris wheel is shut down.
The lights are out. Our eyes adjust to the darkness. 
Nothing moves, 
no one wakes, everyone sleeps. 
The snowdrifts are deep at night.

A TV Billionaire

A TV billionaire becomes president. 

He wants to make America great again.

He wants to build walls and cast out 

eleven million souls into the darkness.

NASA once planted a flag on the moon

(some say in violation of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967)

and he wants to take both the moon and the flag back.

Even as ICBMs blanket the earth,

he promises to build more warheads, stealth bombers,

drones, fighter jets and destroyers. 

I long for news but when it comes, I’m disappointed.

I look for signs of life and try to decode

the signals in the sky. My mind balloons out

but everything seems so far away. 

My telescope cannot see into the past

or predict the future.  

That World Is Gone

I remember friends. I see their children in wedding gowns

and later I see them with babies.

I examine the photos.

I look for evidence of my previous existence

and find no sign.

I cannot return to the past. I have been banished.

I cannot dive into waters that no longer exist.

I cannot return to the park where I skied in winter

and skated under flood lights at night.

I cannot return to that June where I hit balls 
high into the air

that no one would ever catch.

That world is gone but I am no ghost.

Do the dead remember me?

Can they see me now? Do they know my thoughts?

Can they hear me sigh?