BLEAK, OUR FUTURE IS

The world of the future is desolate, despair 

Reigns. The floods are horrendous, sewerage

(foul & pestilent), homeless people, dispossessed

Children, bewildered adults ask “what’s the time?"

(Nothing electronic works). “What’s the time?”

They might as well ask “What Happened?”

“Where are we?” Everything changed in a moment

Of time. Tempers frayed itchy fingers, miscommunication

Released Hell on Earth, cities decimated, countries

Crippled. The big boys had one final test of [pardon the joke]

Superiority. MAD, as it was in the mid-20th century. MAD

It remains. Correction: M.A.D. Mutually Assured Destruction

The Apocalypse? It depends on whose choice of definition

It matters not to the survivors. There are survivors. Desperately

Seeking what has been left, seeking sustenance, shelter.

Above all shelter; from the radioactivity that poisons the land

As much as fears that poison their minds against others.

Some seek company, build communities; others are intent 

On looting and plunder. Did the collective consciousness

Freeze at the detonation of the missiles? Can they remember

The blinding flash of light, as the demons from a thousand

Hells came out to play? Expletives might feel appropriate

They do alter the situation. It is into a ghoul-infected future

I project this strange scenario, an idea possibly as weird

As the witches. It is a time when survivors, intent on survival

Has lost memories of plays and theatre. The few that remember

Speak lovingly of plays they attended, concerts that they had the joy

To remember. They talk of what once was: libraries, the internet

Live theatre and concerts. They remember, they enthuse; they weep

Focus lights on an empty stage (an empty what?) Don’t be so obtuse!

It’s time to present the player; time to introduce the cast

Long may they live; long may they last