We earnestly hope that the fear of nuclear arms doesn't do the dirty work the weapons themselves won't do: demoralize and frighten humanity back to a servile and child-like state.

Little cafes under little hills from which we imagine a total loss. A weeping of birds as they glide into the leaping flames. Time stuck on the old tower, at the seed source where anonymous men made the damn thing. A crazy woman stealing secrets and giving them to unknown enemies. Oh fire from the distance of imagination! The roiling of calculations up the totem of smoke, on a day noone feared, on a day where sleep prevailed and the generals were unable to rouse the public. On a day that made no sense, in the bowels of a library, in the quiet of wide orange chairs staring at the beautiful co-ed, her blonde hair draped on the pages of a clean book.

An illegal day in the history of a soul. A day filled with rattling keys he could not escape. Day that encircles like migratory birds desperate for a new home. Day that the children could not save themselves, day that comes crashing down into the infinity of mind and sets the path for some destination he is already wary of. The games will end tonight, he thinks. The blackness will not go away. Bodies will float down the river like diseased trees, fire will quietly rage while the people stumble in the darkness and cold.

O Giant Thing, where have you taken me? To a place I never wanted, past all the hells that would happily have me. Past the screech and leer of the mad. Past knarled hands seeking revenge. Past the houses of the dead and their carnelian smiles. Past th years of innocence when children played on patio's under great oak trees; played for parents, played for themselves so happy like birds in the arching sunset through trees, when the moon was nothing but itself, that, resting, an old head filled with peculiar light.

So the greatest sound, for awhile, was sleep. And there were no nightmares for many days and weeks. Terrible and wrathful hours that steal lives and take them down to some bad place.

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