By Christos Floratos
Some say the world
Will let out its last whimper
In a swirl of blaze and frost.
But I know better than some.
For I was young when I saw it come.
The lightning struck and struck,
And then some.
A week where it spiked
A month of humidity’s fight.
A year of reason’s most gallows.
A love child of melted ice and Australia’s burn
Against those olden-minds’ saying, most hollow:
“But it’s too chilli!”, would encourage a churn
Don’t you understand the cold?
The wrath of the blizzard is
just the warmth of hell
seeping through the oil-cracks in the earth
and condensing in the smog above.
The warning signs shocked you but
The tremors will rock you to
Your feet, your soles, your souls.
Waves of polyester swamp our beaches
And deep- beyond blue Mariana -are
remanets of Mickey, Cola and your groceries.
The old will give one more hazardous cough
and our world will be untold.
For
We’ve had our last summer
And Autumn’s killed its last tree.
Winter will be the mistress after the affair
And Spring will surely forget us.
After we are gone,
The worms will not remember their banquet on us
For even they will die soon after their feast and celebration.
Ash shall not be gentle reminders on the mantle
For we shall break down to our bare atoms.
For those preachers of old,
The Apocalypse Cometh
-not one of undead, technology or
some forsworn rapture –
But a carrion, inhibited by us.
A fever on the earth, calmed, cared and chilled by oil flames.
Author’s Comments
‘The Apocalypse Cometh’ is a rejection of traditional narratives of the end of the world in favour of the more realistic and impending doom, global warming and climate change. The poem is the penultimate poem of the ‘Autumn, That Bastard’ Poetry Collection and starts by invoking the imagery of the classic Frost Poem, ‘Fire and Ice’.
The Apocalypse Cometh is a rejection of traditional narratives of the end of the world in favour of the more realistic and impending doom, global warming and climate change.
Full Author’s Comments at the end of July!
Christos Floratos 