No need to worry, love,
That world has already ended
And this is the future perfect we dreamed came after,
Not utopia
But grammar and punctuation:
Commas, colons,
‘And’ connecting an ellipsis –
It pauses (the universe, that is) as if
Awaiting
A full stop,
A border that, anyway, merely marks the limit
Beyond which something else exists…
Meanwhile, above the tracks, in the sun
A grey pigeon flutter stutters, flap stop hop flaps and starts again,
Alighting once only on live electric wires,
Recklessly perfect in its precision,
Straight lines and right angles,
Electromagnetic fires,
Violent beauty of particularity,
Et cetera, the list goes on and on…
Standing on platform number one,
Early morning rubbish bins
Contain sad and empty plastic bags;
The day will fill them and overspill them,
Littering benches with unrealised human potential
Stunted by shiny mobiles phones –
A scene from Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’,
Soma happy-clappy Coke ad faces,
On holiday from another holocaust happening before their eyes
And then, when the train arrives,
Electricity arcs, makes sounds like a repeated whiplash,
And, it seems everyone who gets on is laughing, like it’s a shared joke, or some secret song.
As if Auschwitz were the land of their dreams,
The place they were trying to get to all along.
Yes To All Of It 