Friday 25 November 2011

#32: Underwear Overhead

The end of the world came not in thunderous crescendo,
magma oozing like pus from sudden cracks,
nor a single, black moment where everything collapsed,
nor a chilling, nor a thawing,
nor a moaning sea of undead limbs,
but with a slow settling of pants.

The first, it is generally agreed,
a pair of unsoiled olive y-fronts
wafting innocuously from a clear June sky,
settling in a red pillarbox in Stroud.
Only one child read the portent,
pointing and screeching until his mother's chilblained hands
silenced the oracle.

Soon, they fell in drifts.
Cities sank under soft crotches.
You would see farmers, desperately trying to dig out
their lost crops. Pants blotted out the sun.
We burnt them in braziers,
waited for a sunrise
we knew would never come.

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