the nightmare i tried to avoid

the quiet creature in my mirror

with shaven face and eyes aglow with narcissism

reaches for his blood pressure pill;

it's late at night and soon dreams will come,

so the heart needs to remain calm and steady 

if the FBI arrives with a search warrant and government agents

armed with automatic weapons 

open doors

crack windows

peer into toilet bowls

and they're wearing civilian clothes

having arrived in black SUVs 

locked and loaded

ready for civil war

ready to say that justice matters

looking for clues 

to my having been a bad man

and i'm sleeping nude under clean 100% cotton sheets

hearing the slow rumble of a wave crash onto my white sand beach

foaming until the last bit reaches my umbrella pole

stuck firmly beyond high tide line

holding the hot sun at bay

keeping my cooler cooler

and my face from showing shock

as my heavy safe is carted away on a wheeled platform,

my top secrets

highly classified documents

love letters from Kim and many other guys

and passports, too,

are unceremoniously measured and quartered

and swallowed up

into the nightmare i tried to avoid

but was unable

and i curl my left hand into a tiny fist and punch out meanly

into the vastness of empty space.