Apocalypse for Breakfast

I. The Morning After

Awake amid the ashen ruins, remnants of our Waste Land
Fragments of dreams shored against the crumbling psyche
Coffee brews, a bitter elixir to fortify the soul
For one more day in this kingdom of hollow men.

The news crackles, static hiss of impending doom:
Plagues, fires, floods – horsemen saddled up to ride.
We scroll and click, numbed to the unreal cities
Collapsing in clouds of dust beyond our screens.

II. Breakfast at the End of the World

Their table set with meagre scraps, crusts of mouldy bread
Procured from desolate shelves of ransacked stores.
No feast of peach, no luscious fruits to savour,
Just tasteless survival, mechanically consumed.

In Gaza, children buried alive beneath the rubble,
Their cries unheard, their hunger unanswered.
Refaat Alareer, poet of resistance, silenced by bombs,
His words a kite soaring above the smoke and debris.

III. The Desert of the Real

Venturing out into the blighted streets,
An arid landscape, concrete and steel.
Heat shimmers off buckling highways to nowhere.
Tumbleweeds of plastic bags snared on fences.

A red rock rises in the hazy distance,
Mocking reminder of the mountain we never climbed.
Mirages of meaning shimmer and dissolve
Leaving only the thirst, unsated, on cracked lips.

IV. What the Thunder Said

At dusk, thunder rumbles its inscrutable sermon.
An augury of some revelation never quite grasped.
The heavens weep acid rain upon the Unreal City
Eating away at our monuments to hubris and greed.

“Give,” the thunder commands. But what is left to give
When the well is parched and the spring of spirit dry?
“Sympathize,” it booms. An extinct impulse.
Humanity shriveled up with the last green leaf.

V. Shantih Shantih Shantih

The evening star rises, wan and joyless.
No sighs of satisfaction, just rattling breath.
“This is the way the world ends,” Eliot whispered.
Not a bang, not a whimper, but a resigned shrug.

Peace beyond understanding? None to be found.
Just an earth laid waste, picked clean to the bone.
The Hollow Men, stuffed men, final inheritors
Of a world not with a bang, but a tweet, meme, a like.

In the ruins of their homes, mothers cradle
The broken bodies of their starving children.
Kite-poems flutter in smoke-choked sky,
Fragile testament to beauty and resilience undying.

Still, they rise, still they sing, though caged,
Defiant song of those who will not be silenced.

Weary, I lay my head down on the rented pillow
Seeking oblivion, a respite from this bleak tableau.
Tomorrow, I will rise to gulp the bitter dregs once more,
Apocalypse for breakfast, and life forever, life goes on.