The lights flash
Dull red flares of a dying sun
One last power surge before it all shuts down
Acid tears flow, eroding structures of the past,
Etching rivulets in cracked, graffiti-stained concrete
Cold desolation under blackened clouds

These are after-images when I blink my eyes
The insomniac hallucinations at 5 a.m.
These are visions…

Abandoned freeways littered with rusty metal skeletons
Broken storefront windows howl through jagged glass teeth
Fiber optic cables snake their way through cracked blacktop
Electric lines coiled on shattered sidewalk like cobras, waiting to strike
Waiting on a dead grid
A decaying city
A dying sun

A newspaper, yellowed with age, dances through the streets
A solo post-apocalyptic tango until the end of time
It catches a thermal and rises, climbs to disappear into smoggy black

These are after-images when I blink my eyes
These are the fozen stares of abandoned tech plants
These are documents in briefcases of war profiteers
These are the corroded stainless steel memories of a not-so-distant place and time
These the shadows of a world over-civilized
These are the bombs dropped on my subconscious
These are visions, arrested in early morning word form,
Before the sun starts to rise