Half-Life
here on planet earth
we watch sad movies, cry, and eat popped corn with salt
when we want to feel things cheaply.
I wonder what the aliens make of us
tucked up on the mothership
the surface lit up with ghostlights
flickering screens spread across the face of the world.
Future
Cassandra looking onto the wasteland
the bodies and blood to come,
the ruination of the proudest city:
She tried to tell them.
Yes, she tried.
Sometimes I feel the world is again full of prophets
An age of mysteries reborn, this age.
None of the prophecies foretell triumph or delight;
No, not that. Like the Trojan maiden,
it is destruction in seventy shades of darkness
That is what these modern seers proclaim –
A thousand ways to die, for this poor rock
spinning her passengers through the void
And the wailing is a distant timbre always
Itching at the eardrums, until
the city falls in fire.