As he waits, his laser-shades sparkle here
and there in broken wing mirrors and chrome.
Alone, he sets some stolen wheels in motion:
through the night he slides into the sounds
outside the steel solid window. He passes
holograms of the long dead owners of the air
and stars, of the earth and sea and moonlight,
who mortgaged the world down to the bone
so their memory might flicker forever
on broken TV screens. Their immortal
remains locked safe in the Ark Electric,
floating so far in flight from the neon city.

He circumnavigates the ruined world
through dead warehouse, rotted-out cavities,
dead malls, dead factories, dead trees, dead towns
He traverses suburbs a hundred miles high,
abandons the car by the metal scattered shore
and rides the midnight-blue drifting silent
out across dark rocks. He finds the ghost
of romance: her obsolete electronic heart
fluttering in luminescent water beneath
retreating moonlight; they follow the sea;
he holds her close and listens to her tick
into the void as the ocean swirls away.