100: J. Robert Oppenheimer

"If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one."

So it began, with fury,
the birth of a project.
Masks were off and suits were on,
Dapper young fellows carry vigorous minds,
Wear angelic lab coats,
And with skilled hands they paint the pictures
of triumph, of smoke and radiant fire
that transcends earth and enters bodies,
expelling souls
(as if their hollow shells were not empty enough);
He hears it, those words singing sweetly to him:
The Song of the Divine One;
it chants, it roars deep
in his locked heart,
and beats its drum to the tune of a deafening blast.
What have they just seen, here?
Images once witnessed become reality once more -
twice more - and the tired man closes his eyes.
Become master of the race, and others follow his creed,
Appoint him as Father, creator of all ends
An unwilling prophet, undeservingly so.
But the secret is passed on, from mouths within buildings
the virus widens, as does its appeal
with the black-red-white trinity; gift-wrapped fear by the architects.
It soars gently in the air, and floats like a dove.

99: Hiding Buildings

Sometimes the city hides itself,
Powdered snow blessings make icy valleys
Shape-shifted by those windy kisses;
Mimicking dunes of the Sahara at a better time,
Images imagined in collective minds walking
separately, heads facing the ground
that is there no longer, covered by wintry makeup,
white sugary crystals crunch to remember them by.

Look up, if you can - fur-trimmed hood's like a helmet
as we battle this force, this common enemy.
Knee-deep mounds are burial grounds,
dead trees smile with complacence
As the arrival of old visitors take their regular places
Sitting on naked limbs and branches
(Can coldness bring forth warmth?)
and disguises imperfections with diamonds
- if the light hits it right -
Rooftops twinkle with newly-fashioned garb
as if they've been painted
with the most fleeting element that could ever be touched.
They know nothing of the disappearance,
the loss that awaits them with the coming sunshine,
the gold,
the life,
that rids everything away.

And at the end - hear the peace, the calm,
the aching stillness,
the absolutist power of falsified zen.
Everything muted - convincingly, and I was the witness
to the secret of frozen time, once and again:
And the stars cover me, rest upon my shoulders lightly,
with grace,
with reverence,
like I asked them to.

98: Lavender Night

From this angle, the sky is still,
lavender, frozen, in the beat of the night
as we lay paralyzed under sheets of cloth
weaved for comfort and (in)activity.

"To-night we dream to-gether,
alone, together,
everywhere at once,
and at once,
nowhere."

The night is bright, with the dark hue of lavender
shielded with chilly fog, dirt-crust windows, and golden curtains of yellow
I peel them back to glance down at the world, tiny figures zoom
north and south to the town;
But the lights are glowing, a permanent fixture
of the urban birth of nature, a monstrous hybrid --

Thoughts enter my eyes as the deep sleep begins.

It is a manifest of destiny, and the moon agrees
Watching our forced sleep while circling our domain
And the dew drops form from the thirst of the earth
(The plants, too, need their fill after being trampled upon.)
Like a blanket, we are covered; encapsulated,
serene. 'Till we are grappled, choked,
coldly strangled awake
by the amorphous seed of the sound.