A Minute Before Midnight

In the bed of a river that runs no more

there’s a flash and I wake sitting

in sand

              Pat Robertson’s shadow on my left

leaves

            returns with a rune engraved with

lines he claims are fingerprints of God

(I suspect Pat drilled them in his workshop)

The heat of Jerry Falwell’s hand touches

my right shoulder

                                 he hands me a translucent

switchblade

                      calls it angel wings

                                                         says he

found it on the bottom of a bone-dry sea

but

       there isn’t time to judge

                                                   we have to

take the children up the mountain

I’m surprised old Pat and Jerry

seem so young

                            they keep their faces

to the ground so I can’t see they’re

meat puppets of a benevolent

deity

          I walk with Pat who isn’t Pat

          and when it begins to snow I don’t

have a coat but

                            there isn’t time to

           go back

Halfway up the mountain we stop

at a sandwich shop

                                   mother feeds the

children while I search the darkening sky

and see

              there isn’t time to

                                               light a candle

either we see in pitch-black night

or wait for fate at the void’s gate