by Thomas Davis
I woke with his face still in my head,
a handsome young man who looked something like
the oil drilling roustabout
who had lived next to my parent’s house when I was a kid
rough around the edges with startling blue eyes.
When he spoke, though, his voice
was like the classical music
on vinyl records I bought as a teenager
when I wasn’t listening to Simon and Garfunkel
or a country and western star my parents really liked.
“He won’t be like most people expect,”
he’d said in the dream.
“He’ll come out of a tower as opulent,
and filled with human hubris, as the Tower of Babel,
shining even when no sun is in the sky,
and when he speaks, great throngs will gather
even though pestilence is raging,
and their shouting and adulation will stir winds
spreading disease
and fan it into the most remote parts of the land.
“He won’t drive around in a beat up, old pickup
like many of his followers,
but will sail in a huge, black limousine fancier than
most people’s houses,
and he’ll use grievance and insult to stir masses
that march to Sunday church
where they worship a humble man, who championed
the poor and downtrodden
and said fat cats had as much chance
getting into heaven
as a rich man had of getting a camel
through a needle’s eye.
“And as pestilence spreads and poverty grows
out of pestilence,
dissension and intolerance will enter into people’s spirits,
and chaos will churn into an earth
beset by destructive storms, floods, droughts,
and great forests burning, spawning tornadoes of flames,
disasters creating wailing and despair
even as the ocean rises
and voices speaking prophetic warnings
can barely be heard above endless tumult.
“O, he won’t be dressed in red or have horns
or a pointed tail.
He’ll wear expensive suits and act like a common man
with a whirlwind voice singing resentment and anger
and the exquisite joys and promise of human greed.”
As I woke up the man, looking nothing like an angel, smiled,
and I felt disoriented,
wondering if I was waking up, or was trapped, somehow,
in a continuing dream’s fog.
