Armageddon Mon Amour

1
Low-flying planes surrender their tears. The choice is always the same, wake up for good or turn over in your sleep. In the peach orchard the children seek the scant cover of leaves. You’re pretty sure there’s no e in lightning.

2
Follow the weather of longing, fat, pink Rubenesque clouds, signs that say Evacuation Route, the sound of heavy doors opening and closing in the architecture of voids, as the gunship slips away, the queen of hearts and her retinue on deck, and the murk of twilight shushing the world and everything in it.

3
Police on horses tried to keep control. People ran along the streets, opening their mouths and shrieking, little fountains of blood gushing out. She had pictured it beginning differently. What o’clock is it? a red rooster wanted to know. The blood stood in puddles in some places in the road. It was all strangely old-fashioned, the sunlight in her hair making a glory about her head.

4
It was like seeing someone you love go mad and do horrible things. Those who couldn’t walk were beaten. In an insignificant café down a back street, parents exchanged children. The air was all murderous iron, a long wailing sound, invented especially for the end of the world.

 

 

Stacked Coffins

1
On the hour,
assistants gave

schoolchildren
tours of the silent

woods,

the leaves bullet-
shredded and prone

to melancholy.

I hoped I wasn’t
where I thought I was.

2
Chandelier flares,
their fall slowed

by parachutes,
light up the ashes.

The gray car
with the gray men

comes almost
every day.

3
Clear skies
and a bomber’s

moon.

We look at one another
with the mute despair

that has become
a kind of greeting.

 

 

That’s That

No matter
how much
she tries

the lights
don’t flicker

Must be
the pills
he’s taking

children
with helpless
little hands

[Howie Good is the author a full-length poetry collection, Lovesick, as well as 21 print and digital poetry chapbooks, including most recently, Hello, Darkness, available from Deadly Chaps. He blogs at http://apocalypsemambo.blogspot.com.]

Copyright © 2011 by Howie Good, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.