They run up a flag on the roadside.
It is dusted and covered in tar,
But the message still comes across
And it reads without words.

The women and children went first.
The men were quick and fierce,
And the kind hearted were always the first to die.

Plumes of ash and smoke were pillars in the skyline
And it was truth once the birds stopped flying,
That every living thing had died that day.
The rest was existence.

It was an obvious ending.
Played out by the thousands in their minds,
But only a few through their tongues
And so it was said without words.

The lunatics and charlatans came first.
Most didn’t follow them
And they were right not to.

They tied in the imminent and the absurd
Until it was impossible to separate the two.
They spoke of truths understood entirely
But ridiculed all the same.

By the time sanity caught up it was too late.
The trees had lost their branches in a cancer,
Now just charred cigarette stumps
And they died without words.

The trees and the vegetation came first.
But now they grew only in pockets
And even then still scorched by the sun.

And so now the mother was barren.
Her coastlines bruised and skyline broken,
Twisted metal and scorched Earth,
No longer a parent but a victim.

Only the dead and the shadows are living now.
They are dusted and covered in tar,
Their stomachs have long since ceased yowling,
And they starve without words.

The humans were gone first.
Until all that was left was everything grey
And the minions of Orcus.

They are wrought like humans,
But their eyes are feral and their teeth sharpened.
The taste of blood is in their own,
Animal, Angel or Human regardless.

A fire burns and men sit in circles.
What is left of them at least.
They scrape the flesh off the bone
And they live without words.

The bullets were used first.
Cheap and *****, but it got the job done.
Straight through the eye socket.

No moment for practice,
They honed their knife skills on passers-by
Or on the weak and dying amongst them.
The old men bled like raisins.

Old trucks were gutted motels.
Seats with the padding ripped out
And a nest of hornets in the back
And they slept without words.

The sound of rain on metal came first.
And it took the dead into dreams
Of what they once were, if ever there was.

Sounds of traffic outside windows
And the smell of coffee in the streets.
The familiar jingle on the radio
Reminds them of when money bought food.

They dream of whiskey and women.
They sleep in tight groups, breath muted and docile
And think of primal pleasures.
And they dream without words.

Their memories died first.
Until they could not see faces anymore,
Save for the pictures in their wallets.

It was only in the brief interludes,
A moment alone; ******* on a tree
Or clutching their *****
That they felt entirely human again.

Other than that, they were less than air.
It suited them. Everything grey.
Everything grey or transparent,
And they killed without words.

It was language that died first.
A world of communication but no understanding,
Noise but no substance.

Until now there is nothing left but ‘it’
And whatever there is to get there.
For a knife through skin and empty lungs
Is only ****** if you call it so.

And so they run up a flag on the roadside.
It is a beacon for all that are left.
A sign for the gullible pilgrims
And they roast without words.

It was the end that came first.
In the moment that man descended the trees,
And used it for firewood.

Still in our childhood, we had our chance
But we traded it for what felt good.
Would I have it any other way?
It would make no difference now, what I want.

The shadows will limp to their deaths,
Stubbornly chained to the Earth.
And hell comes not in the struggle
But in the potential of man not realised.