Land war will require the most complex
                               combat flying ever flown, with more tragedies
                                                                        of friendly fire inevitable.
                                                                        —CNN Newscast, 2/4/91

Heraclitean, for instance: the world as a gaseous
Shimmer, like afterburner fumes in the oily night sky
Outside Carbondale, where lovers pass through the flux
Of the heart’s napalm—or alchemical: the transformative image
Of the sun over Dallas, antiseptic if you could touch it,
Tritely ætherial, the volatile gold of gas-well burnoff