(Artwork by Marcin Bondarowicz)
I think today is the end of all things conventional,
Whatever had been predictable yesterday, is no more.
Forks and spoons are too rusted to use,
Jutting out of us like some perished nightmare.
Dining room tables are being used for makeshift mausoleums,
(Leave the dead, don’t waste precious energy.)
Electricity went out this morning, water this afternoon.
It reaches everywhere; the world reeks of a decomposing.
There’s a deafening silence ticking down like a giant clock;
Nothing can be heard, save the monstrous, shrieking echo of silence
That swims over our heads like crop-dusters spitting flesh.
We are so goddamn frightened! Is this the end of the world?
Has our greed and apathy finally made its way back to us?
Have our closed hands and open mouths at last climbed inside our minds?
Where are all the loud children skipping home from school?
What day is this? What time is it? What has happened?
At night there will be fireflies and the moon to feebly reassure us.
Everything we’ve ever been told about death and hunger and this moment
Sounds stupid.
All the times we’ve been told of it or witnessed such present horror
Is now speechless.
Everything is so horrifyingly quiet! The mask of life itself is waning
Like leaves falling upon autumn’s sword.
To our hands, the children. To our feast, the world
Now shaking off its parasites with winter’s cold harmony.
Of our hands, the stillness. Of our hunger, the stench
Masking any good that has ever been grown in the field
Or expressed with the sustenance of any true and decent love.
© 2009 mrp/thepoetryman
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