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.

They swallowed their pride in a vile devotion,

bit off their tongues and were done.

Ignoble things are we, and blindly we yield:

Unknown 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.

Let those yet living view their burnt-umber sky;

may they wilt in misgiving,

may their tomes and testaments 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!

We've won. Down goes the sun.

Now babes are still, now spent are fears,

and time's a breeze that no one hears

blowing by…blowing by.

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.