That Moment

or this moment: the fist flying through the air, the face of the stranger breaking open, the glasses falling from the face, the face crying after them with blood, the features losing their family resemblance, the snug shape of the skin smeared and stretched, the crack of the bone of the nose as it breaks - that moment when a fist breaks a face, drunk and on drugs and unamused by the random Dutch - or that other moment: the one feared by Dr. Strangelove, when a fist rests its finger by a button, a button that will break a city, bring down a city, obliterate a city, and by the button the fist lingers a little, lights a last cigarette, or cigar, the vapour blue and lazy, and the towers wait, ready to tumble, and the windows quiver, ready for the burning to fling and to fall, and the boundaries on the maps are ready to be rendered as meaningless as rubble, as if the drawing of a child all crude and wrong, then all torn up, or rather, torn from the face of the earth - or any other moment a human decides at the drop of a hat to destroy a human - tell me, someone, when the only record of a life is blood forced out of a face by a fist, smeared upon the rubble, dribbling through the ruins - what would you keep from today, tucked away in the corner of your fist, tucked away from all such moments, what survivor would you offer the desolate future, what seed, aside from the brutal will to eat?