END OF THE WORLD

		Not with a trumpet
			but a whisper.  No angels
		proclaimed the end.  Prophets
		with sandwich signs
			did not predict it.
		No tea-leaf ladies
			or noted astrologers
		predicted the end would come
		at half-past eight
			in the morning.

		It was a Monday,
			(of all days!)
		catching them dressed
		all fit for their funerals.

		Who would have guessed
		that this October,
		instead of leaves
		the people turned
		and blew away,
		that gravity,
		that faithful plodder
		would take a holiday?

		First some commuters
		on a platform in Connecticut
		fell straight into a cloudless sky
		trying to hook
			to lampposts and poles
		with flailing arms.

		Even the oversize stationmaster
		was not immune,
		hung by his fingertips
		to shingled roof,
		an upside-down balloon.
		His wig fell off,
		the rest of him
		shot shrieking upwards.

		Slumlords in Brooklyn
		dropped rent receipts,
		clutched hearts and wallets
		as they exfoliated,
		burst into red and umber explosions
		and flapped away.

		A Senator stepped down
		from bulletproof limo,
		waved to the waiting lobbyist,
			(sweaty with suitcase
			full of hundreds)
		only to wither to leaf-brown dust, 
		crumbling within his overcoat.
		Stockbrokers tightened their power ties,
		buttoned up monogrammed blazers,
		pushed one another from narrow ledge
		falling from Wall Street precipice
		into the waiting sky,
		printouts and ticker tapes,
		class rings and credit cards
		feathering to sidewalk.

		Bankers turned yellow,
		wisped out like willow leaf
		from crumpled pin-stripe
		filling the air
		with vomit streamers
		passing the roof
		of the World Trade Center.

		The colors astonished:
		black women turned ivory,
		white men went brown and sere,
		athletes swelled up
			to fuchsia puffballs,
		Chinese unfurled
			to weightless jade umbrellas.

		Winds plucked the babies from carriages,
		oozed them out of nurseries,
		pulled them from delivery rooms,
		from the very womb -
		gone on the first wind out and upwards.

		Crowds jammed the stratosphere,
		darkened the jet stream.
		Too frail to settle in orbit,
		they drifted to airless space.

		They fell at last into the maw
		of the black hole Harvester,
		a gibbering god
			who made a bonfire
			of the human host
		the whirling spiral of skeletons
		a rainbow of dead colors
		red and yellow, black and brown
			albino and ivory
		parched-leaf skins a naked tumble.

		The bare earth sighed.
		Pigeons took roost in palaces.
		Tree roots commenced
		the penetration of concrete.
		Rats walked the noonday market.
		Wild dogs patrolled
			the shopping malls.
		Wind licked at broken panes.
		A corporate logo toppled
			from its ziggurat.
		Lightning jabbed down 
			at the arrogant churches
			abandoned schools
			mansions unoccupied

		started a firestorm
		a casual fire
		as unconcerned
		as that unfriendly shrug
		that cleaned the planet.

				- Brett Rutherford

Links to other sites on the Web

Read more by Brett Rutherford at The Poet's Press

Poem used by permission of The Poet's Press

---

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page