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Poems copyright 1995 by Richard Fein.
Illustration copyright 1995 by George Livingston.

George is an artist who lives and works in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Richard's poetry has appeared widely in print and in electronic publications such as @EZine and Change.

Cortez, Aztecs,
Pizarro, Incas,
we're the Aztecs, we're the Incas.
Perhaps this is poetic justice.
How many hearts have we cut out
building our golden temples?
Clever and cruel
our future conquerors.
My close encounter a brief cat-and-mouse game.
They blithely told me everything.
They even let me pilfer an artifact,
turned out to be a Styrofoam cup.
They make them there also,
was then that I started being afraid.

I have no tangible proof, and they know it.
So they told all and let me go.
Were I to play Paul Revere,
I'd wind up howling in a mental ward.
But a coming is at hand, surely,
be it a first or a second.
A time of leveling under heavenly beings.
Presidents, Prime Ministers, CEO,
little me, and of course you
will all tote their incoming luggage.
They don't tip.
Among humans the class struggle will end,
a brotherhood servility forever.
Their architecture will sprout like weeds,
rising above all we've built.
And I was picked as their new age herald.
A joke of course.
I make a shabby Isaiah.
It's the straightjacket for me if I sound too convincing,
unless I couch my warning as a poem.

One package of bread falls off a truck
owned by the Mega-Foods Conglomerate, Inc.
Loss in profits -- zero.
One starving, homeless man grabs the bounty,
rips open the package, and ravenously gorges.
That a crumb will fall is mathematically certain.
An ant scout happens on the fallen manna.
It thrusts its antennae heavenward as if it were giving thanks.
Two beings feasting.

But there are more entities.
Within the ant is a protozoan
also reaping what is sown,
and within the protozoan
a bacterium finds its place at a table,
while a singular viral particle
can now gather an abundance of nucleotides,
as universes of macromolecules are rearranged.
Within the universes is one universe,
and within that singular cosmos is a singular atom --
and around that atom,
the turning constellations of quanta have set in motion
a rippling cascade of causalities
that puts food on an infinitely near yet infinitely distant table.
And by that table yet another being
feasts and offers up a prayer
to the minutest of heavens.

There is nothing new under the sun,
but on the last day the sun will go nova.
In the heavens there will nothing but light,
and where all is light no one stands in anyone's shadow.
But what will be the literal truth?
Under the midnight sky there will be no one living
to witness Mars and Jupiter brighten the dark,
as the planet gods bask
in the reflection of that convulsing light.
Nor will the last of the living look to the east,
to behold a star dawning in an angry red,
No wise men bearing gifts will plod in cool sands.
No Savior to find. Nothing to save
For the searing wind will have stirred to a whirlwind,
which will be circling the earth
gathering into it all that could move.
The Judas heaven will give no eternal life,
as a tightening belt of heat
cauterizes the earth of all flesh.
The dead world will still turn,
and on it each cracked rock will face the burning dawn,
then the dusk, then the dawn, then the dusk,
in a world where dawn and dusk no longer have meaning.

Stand amid myriad processes.
Remove shoes -- and heels and soles are touched.
Lie down too long,
as in death,
and be penetrated and consumed
by an entity miles long underfoot,
with pale, wispy, white hyphae
almost infinite in number.
And erupting every few feet
are red-spotted, blue domes,
fruiting beauties poking through the humus.
But there's more to the dome-shaped genitalia.
A creature lies below
that dwarfs blue whale and sequoia.
Try to rip one from the earth,
and a whole county would be erased from the map.
Its crisscross fibers warp the soil,
like gravity bending the fabric of time and space.
Black holes wait to consume stars -- even galaxies,
while inches under the earth a patient being,
hungry for decay also waits,
with latticework fingers carpeting the square miles.
After the black-cowled angel of death extends his inevitable greetings,
the filamentous beast becomes his acolyte,
as tidy and frugal as the angel is diligent,
consuming everything, wasting nothing,
binding all to a common fate.

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