the sun didn’t rise this morning, as it hasn’t for the last month, doubt it ever will again

ash fills the skies, acrid and still burning, the silence is punctuated by the soft hiss of burning flesh

the circle of strife, end times for the casual hedonist, apocalypse in three four measure

pillars of smoke, blackened from the toxins rise in the distance, obscuring the landscape

yet he sits on his bench, on the dark side of the plume, tapping his feet to a song only he hears

the ghost of a smile on his weathered face, as the rest of the world burns he takes in the view

it is funny, not laughing funny, but bitterly funny, macabre with tendrils of the blackest black

how the seed planted in his chest took hold, roots of chlorophyllic rapture speed under skin

armageddon for two, boiling lakes of fire providing the backdrop for scenic dementia like fireworks

of nightmares and relish, reimagined odes to sulfuric release at the edge of rapture