Pleading With an Ibid's Hem (formerly The Golden Bullet), edit 1

[vagabond]

 The dream began as they always do:
familiar dread, unfamiliar place—
children with the names I gave them                      
and ages that make no sense in logical time.

Men stood in rows like solemn corn,
like a marching band with no routine and no music,
only Paul Ryan's slicked black All-American hair,
navy blue fitted suits, and placid eyes that followed
                           in think it would be smoother without that blank line between follow and bullet.
the bullet gleaming golden overhead,
the way that kittens fix on a wiggling string.           strings could be plural.. and maybe "as" instead of "the way" (since it comes a second time later)
Their faces showed no fear,
no judgment, no signals of thought,                
just a silent ------wow------
and mouths slung open the way they slack
when the mind abandons consciousness.        i think those 5 lines could be shorter,
something like "their faces showed no judgement/mouths slacked open and abandoned/in silent awe."


There was no covenant,                       i wondered if you could leave out "from jahweh" and write "no ark in sight"
or sign from Yahweh—
no prepared ark.   

They never looked down or to the side,        "they never dropped their eyes to see us/ wash away"?
so they didn't see us wash away.


somehow this reminds me of  atom bomb testing. i read a nightmare of the apocalypse into it.
 man-made, not necessarily men-made.
therefore i first thought maybe you should put "generals" or "scientists" in the second stanza instead of "men".. but that sounds too specific for a dream. have no solution for that and the problem anyway exists only in my head, which wants to read a slightly different question about who ordered and why, but that would just lead astray and probably wouldn´t fit into your poem. so nevermind : )

i like how you describe this fatal fascination.
the kittens, fixed on that string caused me to think about instincts involved.. beside admiration of power (which your title seems to ironically point at)

love the last two stanzas , wash away is a good image, especially with ark mentioned before.