before the road. after my entire life. right between my eyes. the lips of an avenging angel.

but what i really do not want is 100 million refugees per meter of seawater.  i don't want the polar ice caps to melt all at once.  (it seems like all at once.  fifty years is nothing.  i'll still be alive in fifty years.)  but i don't want the entire urban population of the united states to get sick either.  these chemicals.  jesus christ.  how did we get involved in something like this?  the environment hands us a .22. television programs are now designed for terrorist purposes. scientists are using radio waves to strike fear into the hearts of anyone who's bored enough to listen.  what if i am not saving people in twenty years?  what if i need to be saved?  what if i never become a doctor or have a black cat or marry my wife?  what if it gets to her first? what if venice is completely submerged?  what if polar bears go extinct and riots start all over the united states, and i always admired molotov cocktails, but what if kids die?  or riot police? what if i am beaten to the ground by a nightstick?  what if the asphalt opens up beneath my bloodied temple and i am crushed between two walls of earth?  what if i am bringing a knife to a nuclear war?  what if the inevitable nuclear winter makes all this a moot point?  i can't see the world in a hundred years.  what if i'm not blind?  what if it simply 

is not there?