“When The World Comes Crashing Down”
The purple bikini bottoms of Pattaya Beach,
John Pilger’s “The Coming War on China” teaches me the history of the article,
Palm trees sway in my adolescent mind from napalm bomb winds.
Rather than read Heart of Darkness in school I opted for Apocalypse Now
Depreciating my grade on the test.
Later the article sits deliberately left behind in my Xi’an apartment
As a kind of sign,
Like the drawn sixties girls in a Thunderball poster,
Hearing her rolling luggage still echoing out the door.
It was named for Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands,
A nuclear testing site for the United States for over a decade.
The imperial yellow high-rise looks over centuries, millennia of city layers
The flying eaves of traditional Chinese architecture
Some sixteen blocks back
Amid bewildering density of urban sprawl,
One might feel a smidge of vertigo like Frank Olson. As
though not even the most towering, unmovable authorities,
Especially them,
Could ever be trusted.
The Beatnik Cowboy 
Thank you, I enjoyed your poem, its dark and interesting. It reminds me of my wife’s grandfather, who was on out on the water when they dropped the nukes in the South Pacific. He even got a certificate from the navy. Later in life he died of Alzheimer or Parkinsons, Gee I wonder why?
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I see. Yes. . . Thank you for your comment, Lucio. My paternal grandfather whom I never met died within months of my birth, from brain cancer. He served in the Korean War, I believe to do with his specialization in chemistry.
The historical figure featured for use as a metaphor in this poem, Frank Olsen, has a complicated story. It’s explored with a lot of essential detail in the 2017 documentary “Wormwood.” This docu-series was created by the acclaimed filmmaker Errol Morris, whose works include “The Fog of War” (2003), an extended interview with Robert McNamara, and The Thin Blue Line (1988).
Olsen’s death had long been mystified by tabloid narratives fixating on the intrigue surrounding it. The docu-series ultimately posits the theory that Olsen was assassinated for being prepared to blow the whistle on unethical use of biological and chemical warfare in the Korean War, if I’m not mistaken.
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Correction: “Frank Olsen [sic]” Frank Olson
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