Mushroom Cloud

Mushroom Cloud

Galvanic grew the night:

O godawful sight--the streets and highways teeming,

pugilists locked in slow-rocking chrome,

blood of exhaust in riots of foam.

Let us rest now our weary wheels;

that our bloodguilty souls

might shrivel up and fry.

Blinding was the light;

then darkness was all we knew.

Night swallowed day in frightful slow-motion,

regurgitating stains like mirrors,

faces like cinders, shadows like eels.

Parks and playgrounds steaming;

carousels prone, whelps up their spines,

rubbish washed seaward, swept away cleanly,

merging obscenely with rubble and loam.

Wild eyes blinked and were gone,

bullies hugged mothers, perverts freed prey;

predators prayed, in vespers like green victims screaming.

Expressions were ripped, stripped of their paint and emotion;

lovers whipped lifeless, their crass wayward flesh

fused and blackened and hastened away.

Seed-bearers howled, their privates on fire,

surrendered their pride in a vile devotion,

champed on their tongues and were done.

Ignoble things are we, and sightlessly we yield,

for blind to this husk of flesh, beneath this heaving soil,

where fires are shyest will vestiges grow,

and break for the sun once the horror has healed.

May those yet living view their burnt-umber sky;

let them wilt in misgiving, let their tomes to irreverence lie.

May the damned and the wicked fall to their knees and cry.

Sing it: Sweet salvation is come!

All’s forgiven, the cup is passed! Men are equal,

peace at last! Thank God it’s over. The war is over:

we’ve won. Down goes the sun.

Now babes are still, and spent are fears,

and time’s a breeze that no one hears

blowing by…victors, in unison, cry: No more starvation!

No segregation. Thank God it’s over. The war is over:

we’ve won. Down goes the sun.

Down goes the sun.