All of This

The smiles of those above

fade further with every

passing second.

-

We began so simply,

we followed our instincts,

we survived,

we tried

to move on.

-

Now we hold the end of the world

in a laboratory somewhere

ready to throw it across the sea

without a second’s notice.

-

Now we price ourselves out of

the same things we invented.

-

Now we capture one another

and force them into labour

and feed generational trauma,

alterations to your genes.

-

We prepare ourselves for certain death,

and are thrown around like

ashes in the wind.

-

We built all of this:

the cities, the skylines, the seas

and the bombs.

-

We made those words which

we now curse ourselves with.

-

We burnt the skin,

we buried our dead,

how many coffins have we made, by now?

-

And still, we sit inside,

reading light romantic novels, chuckling away

when a man

on a screen

is hit in the face

with a pie.

-

We play up this charade,

we dance around the inexorable

the inevitable

the great flash that will take our bodies

so quickly that we’ll never bleed.

-

The sky will turn orange,

then green,

then red,

and will stay black forever,

as a new species tries

to rise from the ashes

and is forced into

mourning all that we did.