If these are the end times, as biblically foretold
Or just the bubble of civilization approaching its burst
From climate change
Or the breakdown of dysfunctional political corporatism
Let’s appreciate them, the end times
Let’s make love as often as possible
Let’s love these days
These rare days when everyone with privilege across the globe
Can buy the same perfect apples in air-conditioned sameness
These commonplace days of global luxuries
Where winter just means having to fly your strawberries in from across the globe
Appreciate the luxuries that may not be around much longer
Since there seems to be sufficient portents to nudge me towards gloom
Thinking doom and doomsday plots
As reports flood in of massive ice melts, methane gas releases, shrinking glaciers
While dystopian planners hunker down in pinched fear gearing up for a fast ride to hell
And failed states release terror into the shipping lanes
Failed rulers cling noose tight to power with blood red iron fingertips
Overhead strange signs appear
Like grid patterns of chemtrails crossing lines from secrecy to sin
Leaving us at the mercy of a tainted wind
Droves of us mill about in sheepled delusions
Brainwashed by selective education and finely crafted propaganda
Called popular culture
Our behaviour manipulated to ensure submission into complicity
But understanding the inherent flaws in this grand monoculture
There’s still some room for righteous hedonism on the way out
Because there is a lot to be savored in this shimmer
And if there is some apocalyptic descent into chaos
Waiting in ambush around the next bend
Don’t we owe it to everyone to use every possible pleasure to its limit
And if this scrap survives beyond whatever ultimate disaster takes us out
To be read by some far futured survivor picking up pieces
To you I say, it was fucking awesome to be alive at the apex
David Trudel © 2013
sepia toned
we woke up sepia toned
not drained of colour but transformed into shimmers
light lays flat
yellowed as yesterday’s bloodied sun
slipped sideways on a once upon
we call each other asking
“do you see it too?”
and words like apocalypse
like endtimes, like otherworldly
fill our mouths as the sky fills our thoughts
later, waiting for the ferry
I walk the beach up to and under the dock
crosshatched shadows feed the noontime reek of creosote
triggering memories of campfires
then all I smell is the smoke of a carbon sink
a million trees candled in the wind
a burning world
riding thermals down every seaward valley on the coast
until each wave pushes another dragon under
we try to laugh about how strange it looks
as the sun reddens its shroud
today is marked in black
this is the year when winter thins its cool
no matter how golden the sky seems right now
or how wonderful splintered light appears slipping through ashfall
this is no celebration
this is not the same as other years
when autumn slashpiles streamed pendants
today is amber
a moment to hold long enough to remember
how startled we once were
David Trudel © 2015
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