But only one
and nothing is still nothing
in a sum of days so small
yet the multiplication
soon equalled so much more
to be undone
in my smog-strangled daze
beneath grimy wheelhouse tombstone
shadowing begger-black
land in a pitheaded
adolescent swagger
stopping life with each heartbeat
stomp stomp of coaldust boot
on new grave

In summer song
were the bars where lovers met
and compared their off-key notes
tone deaf in their heedless joy
to the dying cries of
man's heartless wrong
when all is right with soft
woman hot between thrusting thighs
harpooned and holy
oblivious to the
creeping warm waning of a world wet
with maiden's tears and here
today gone

Tomorrow toil
will wrap its staff between sheets
white and wasted let fresh trees
fall to flesh-flensed forest floor
and burn their blackened scars
into ashen soil
so in crumpled dusk grim
the reaper may cast his barren
harlot seed to blight
this chainsaw desert in the
lost dreamtime meantime of
the land before that nuclear day
light dawns chill and wintry
weak too late

The end began
without me and I never
knew although my soul embraced
that missing shoot, to kill was
alien rite warping weft
of this day's plan
once more before the dark
arc swings out to aphelion
to ride the high tide
down rabid rivers of
man's callous acid reign
to hear the far-off crackle
of the last new leaf we
may turn over.