Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Everything from the inside
looked like it was
about to blow it all
on the outside.
The incubator was swelling
alarmingly,
the warning bells
were all sounding,
electricity sizzling
in the sockets.
A waving finger
waved caution
at the scientists
but they would not listen
and so two hundred and fifty six figures came roaring out
of time,
the highest number of sea fish ever were caught
in a net off the coast
of Ireland,
and a million frogs rained down,
snakes sped through the grass
like blood in veins,
and the whistle of chimneys
became fiery mouths, spewing citadels
and torture victims
all the way across America.

And so this is the end of the world as we know it,
I told myself, either that, or it
is the beginning.

So I drove my car out
on that early Sunday morning,
to a freezing cliff top in Sussex,
before the church bells had even chimed ten,
before my toast had even settled.
And when I got there, I turned off the engine,
jumped out onto the grass
and started running,
my body
hurtling towards infinity,
towards those
invisible particles
that danced
on the other side of
the crumbling cliff edge;
in a sky which was now
all red and brimstoney,
all awash with chaos
and clutter.

I didn't want to die,
but before the eclipse
darkened over the world
that'd finally blot
our last lights out,
I wanted a little bit of heaven to open up
and receive all the too much living
that'd passed through my eyes,
and herald the joy of life
before all life was over.

What can I say?
I ran at the edge.
I glimpsed,
I gasped
I saw, perhaps

I jumped.