(aka: don’t be so dramatic, it’s only 1/? anyway)

no sirens no warnings no red
lights whirling in the air

it’s not nuclear nor flying
through space—no screaming
you can hear;

but, make no mistake!

this thing will eat you alive

IT:

slowly takes hold with malevolent grip—
one hand inked with “disbelief,” the other
with “fear” tattooed across its knuckles,
the trivialities of paper and politics non-
sensical, yet still reigning supreme

lines drawn in the sand with waves
washing over them, each side still standing,
now improvising demise

some sort of dystopian nightmare come to life,
à la Bradbury or Huxley, Orwell or Rand?

            (truth is stranger than science-fiction?

                                  —no:

what good were all those “brilliant” novels
if’n they ain’t amount to nothin?

what use was all they foretold if it happened anyway?

—oh, yet genius they receive from beneath their graves:
“wouldn’t be one if it didn’t come true,” one proclaims
with a pointed pen, reprimanding, half-moon eyeglasses,

[more like a crescent, the most arrogant of phases]

a tweed shoulder-and-elbow-patched blazer, unabashed and unafraid,
translucent with all their recent losses)

barely breathing through some primordial orifice at first,
now drawing heavy, heaving breaths through its ever-growing gaping hole…

us, as powerless and docile as ever;
reverse (r)evolution, a mitotic backlash

                      (“be kind, please rewind”
           “be warned, don’t fast forward”)

until we’re all single cells in our single cells,
still and subservient unless told otherwise;

(handshakes are gone)
(get-togethers are gone)

intimacy is gone;

HUMAN CONTACT IS GONE

……………………………………………………
…………………………………………
…………………………….
……………………
…………….
………..

…the breeze still blowing
    the sun still shining
    the birds still singing—

    same as they always have,
    same as they always will—

it’s not the end of everything, my darling—
    oh, no! hardly!—
only the end of us.

(don’t forget to wash your hands)