The end of the dream will be bright
golden angels descending in columns
through a black sky in the industrial night,
transforming into airplanes approaching for landing,
and gray clad officials will there board their dark
buses with windows tinted black,
and the police will hold the traffic back
as they go through the compounds of the city,

through the underground networks
and secret tunnels, to arrive at the nerve center,
with convoys that come in, trucks loaded with food,
while outside the hunger-maddened, disposable
people hurl themselves against barbed-wire barricades,
trying to steal a few crumbs from the masters.

Douglas Cole has published Four collections of poetry: Interstate (Night Ballet Press); Western Dream, (Finishing Line Press), The Dice Throwers, (Liquid Light Press), Bali Poems (Wordtech Press), as well as a novella, Ghost (Blue Cubicle Press). His work is in anthologies such as Best New Writing (Hopewell Publications), Bully Anthology (Kentucky Stories Press) and Coming Off The Line (Mainstreet Rag Publishing). His work also appears or is forthcoming in journals such as The Chicago Quarterly Review, Owen Wister Review, Iconoclast, Slipstream, Red Rock Review, Wisconsin Review, Two Thirds North, San Pedro River Review, Badlands, Common Ground Review, The Ocean State Review, and Midwest Quarterly. He received the Leslie Hunt Memorial Prize in Poetry; the Best of Poetry Award from Clapboard House; and First Prize in the “Picture Worth 500 Words” from Tattoo Highway. His website is douglastcole.com.