After The Fall Poem by Richard Weissman

Food speckled spittle flies onto zombie-eyed ears as
machina politic spews venomous dogmas from pulpit-like podiums,
Words fall to quiet now, engines rev to ice-boiling hot
while insatiable appetites of steel-tipped, brass chests
anxiously wait tomorrow's unanswerable roll call.
Now, in blood stained silence of corpseless graveyards,
Now, steel-tipped, brass chests clamor with fatalistic fervor
for mushroom cloud nightmares.
Now, white lighted angel of death shakes Great Mother passionately
as atomic wind breezes caress burnt flesh, hastening peeling from bones.
Ash weeps onto earthy spaces
as masses huddle in shelterless, rubbled corners,
'neath skeletons of steely towers, whispering fearfully, darkly,
Of new world's nuclear winter,
Now that the Fall is done.

(1991)