Dystopia

Floating through a rainy night
on one of the precarious margins of life,
the curtain of water parts before me,
and I can see a crossroads of
busy highways and bucolic paths,
mighty rivers and prattling streams,
all converging like daggers,
sharp and threatening 
in the face of a wrong turn.

In one direction I see a city on a hill
guarded by sinewy dogs
with fiery red eyes 
and bared teeth gleaming
through the misty moonlight.
Large men dressed in black
twirl nunchucks and move
in and out of the darkness,
causing even the dogs
to cower and whimper.

From within the city
I hear music, the pop of corks
and the clink of champagne glasses
kissing in the night,
men shouting hoarsely,
their women emitting occasional 
frenzied shrieks.

I turn and look opposite,
where stands another city,
this one in dark quietude.
I make my way in that direction,
hopeful of finding respite
from my long nocturnal journey.

After a time the road narrows
into a rough-hewn trail
and straggles on until
it is no more,
and I find myself 
moving through tall weeds
whose tendrils thrust up
like arms of the dead
reaching from the grave 
to grasp my ankles
and force me to join them.

I press on to the edge
of the heart of the city,
around me vacant lots
and shells of abandoned buildings,
beyond, tall structures looming 
where the people of the city of gold
finance their nighttime revels.

Ahead is a highway underpass
teeming with silhouettes around a fire,
homeless people rousted
from their makeshift encampment 
of tents and cardboard shacks.
Two men argue over Vienna sausages,
a child cries for her teddy bear,
lost as her family was swept from
what they had called home.

They present no threat
as I pass into their daytime world,
the canyons of the city streets,
ghostly now in the half light before dawn.
On a sidewalk I see a woman,
thin and haggard,
holding an imaginary leash
walking an imaginary dog,
stooping to clean up
the dog’s imaginary mess,
then rising to point a finger
at her pet and chide it
for tugging at its restraint.
Farther on a bearded man in rags
staggers toward me and asks
whether I remember the Ia Drang,
where North Vietnamese regulars
fired low through the tall grass
to cut the legs from under our troops,
the better to steal back in the night
and execute the wounded.
For his service there, this is his reward.
Another shuffles back and forth
loudly praising the Lord
in a sing-song voice,
a human wind-up toy.
Others stumble out of alleys
or crawl from dumpsters
and whirl about me like wind before a storm,
but do me no harm.

I ponder the denizens of
these two cities of the night,
asking who is most righteous,
who will enter the Kingdom of God,
and I realize that my journey is done,
I am at home with the homeless.