Bodies jostle toward the heatsource,
Foot stomp, elbowed in the rib,
Muttering voices hoarse, exhale mists
That swirl like deadmen's ashes in the wind.
Pale lumina saturates the cinder skies,
Under which the aged remember
The suns of former lives,
Their memories the glowing solitary embers
Of a world we've left behind.
Ahead, a mother veils her babe with rags
From a passer-by's ravenous gaze.
A man automatously drags
A rattle-bag of assorted human remains,
Leaving trails in the dirt,
Leaving trails in the dirt.
We have splintered apart the frame
Of this landscape of hellpain,
Against smokestack sequoias and asphalt seas,
We stumble toward the crematoria.
My God, the coldness hurts!
As upon the canvas of this frozen Earth
We enact the terminus of human innovation,
The burning of every breath,
The engineered suicide of civilization.
Out, out, brief candle,
said Macbeth.
Into the cull chamber I step,
Hoping there at least I will find warmth,
In death.

The skies have rendered everything a pale grey.
Not used to our own thoughts, the screams still ring in our ears.
We are all wandering under the ash rain, eyes low.
Nothing heard, nothing said.
There’s not much of us left, not much of anything.
After this agony, where will we go?

When these wounds heal, and the skies finally clear.

All we will have is a wasteland.

They built the rhinoceros because God
foretold of coming war in which they'd need
sanctuary from the evil unthawed
beasts Earth's burning would hellishly unleash.
They built him of steel and electronics,
infused with a human intelligence,
and huddled raw within like unmade bricks
within a kiln, until their God dispensed
His justice: No escape / the heat turned on
They baked / the devil-beasts of *****

We shelter in caves
Beneath a man-made steel sky
Once reflective of our soul
Now corroded, its reflection a reminder of our great lie
That the Earth could be tamed
Exploited and submitted in the name
Of the human race
Now it is we who must abase ourselves
Deep underground
As above the megastorms tear apart the heavens
Grinding all the atmospheric rust
into vicious orange clouds
Which fall upon us: a forever-rain of dust
Blue oceans smothered
Forests choked
Fields unrecovered
Fires infinitely stoked
We dreamed once of going to Mars
But see instead it's Mars that's come to us
Descended people of a dead planet
We reap the fallen dust
We weep
       the falling dust

At the toll of the bell,
After Heaven and Hell,
When our satellites fell,
Did we fare so well?

When the oceans have choked,
Fraught with plastic and smoke,
The halcyon barriers broke,
And the Old Ones awoke.

Now we are so few,
Scattered fro-and-to,
Like Babel anew,
What are left to do?

The sun has grown cold,
Withered stories untold,
Our hearts had been sold,
For failures and fool's gold.

So pray for calmer weather,
Now and forever,
But this life won't get better,
This is my final letter.