In many short years
we’ll know we were sweet and naive.
We’ll think about the things we thought,
our understated predictions
our dinner table conversations.
There were floaters
in our oracle’s eyes.
It will not be the now
that we know.

As what happens to us
disappears
like the sound of an engine
in the fog,
moving away.

In many short years
Auschwitz has a café.
After the tour
all the waitresses
come from the kitchen
uniformed
to sing to you
on your birthday.


In many short years
they’ll build on Chernobyl
and Fukushima will be an oasis.
There’ll be fields of bodies
fertilising strawberries
for other countries.

-

We’ve got no memory.
Horrors aren’t like happiness
they lose their impact
with every sharing
and every listen.

Will you be there?
In the next big thing.
Think of that.
How much faster everything’s destroyed
than it’s made.
Think of what work your life took

Wrong gods appear again.
As always a side will be picked for you.
As always the goals are your own.

And the answers are more questions,
homophones,
the same lessons
and still they’ll bomb playgrounds
built on bomb sites.


-

Then the next big thing.
Your entropy,
that starts and ends in fire.
The wolf
from another wood and paper town.
The flames on your monuments
and shopfronts
caught on divine wind
and a scent for sin.

Most now know
they’ve never been scared before.
Things you never thought could alight
prove you wrong.
The air stings and follows
and the clouds finally become too much for the sun.

Your heartbeat’s afterlife
is someone else’s tutting.

Unread letters,
guitars and bars with history,
family traditions
and the weight of her hand,
thumb hooked to the belt loop
of your jeans

are now one weather formation.

And under all
is flat and yellow
like an African morning.

Is it angels or great bats
which have given you
your turn?