Milestones Toward Oblivion Poem by Michael Burch

These are poems about the Apocalypse, Armageddon, the Day of Judgement, the End Times or Last Days, the Final Battle or Final Battleground, the Final Countdown, the Cataclysm, the Catastrophe, Nuclear Holocaust, Nuclear Winter, MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) , etc.

Milestones Toward Oblivion
by Michael R. Burch

"A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought."
—Ronald Reagan

A milestone here leans heavily
against a gaunt, golemic tree.
These words are chiseled thereupon:
'One mile and then Oblivion.'

Swift larks that once swooped down to feed
on groping slugs, such insects breed
within their radiant flesh and bones...
they did not heed the milestones.

Another marker lies ahead,
the only tombstone to the dead
whose eyeless sockets read thereon:
'Alas, behold Oblivion.'

Once here the sun shone fierce and fair;
now night eternal shrouds the air
while winter, never-ending, moans
and drifts among the milestones.

This road is neither long nor wide...
men gleam in death on either side.
Not long ago, they pondered on
milestones toward Oblivion.

NOTE: These are poems about worst-case scenarios for the human race: a nuclear war that results in a nuclear winter; climate change in the form of extreme global warming that results in an extinction event or radical change in human evolution; Armageddon; the Apocalypse; the Hiroshima atomic bomb blast; the Holocaust and Nakba.



Burn
by Michael R. Burch

for Trump

Sunbathe,
ozone baby,
till your parched skin cracks
in the white-hot flash
of radiation.

Incantation
from your pale parched lips
shall not avail;
you made this hell.
Now burn.



Davenport Tomorrow
by Michael R. Burch

Davenport tomorrow...
all the trees stand stark-naked in the sun.

Now it is always summer
and the bees buzz in cesspools,
adapted to a new life.

There are no flowers,
but the weeds, being hardier,
have survived.

The small town has become
a city of millions;
there is no longer a sea,
only a huge sewer,
but the children don't mind.

They still study
rocks and stars,
but biology is a forgotten science...
after all, what is life?

Davenport tomorrow...
all the children murmur through vein-streaked gills
whispered wonders of long-ago.



Lucifer, to the Enola Gay
by Michael R. Burch

Go then,
and give them my meaning
so that their teeming
streets
become my city.

Bring back a pretty
flower—
a chrysanthemum,
perhaps, to bloom
if but an hour,
within a certain room
of mine
where
the sun does not rise or fall,
and the moon,
although it is content to shine,
helps nothing at all.

There,
if I hear the wistful call
of their voices
regretting choices
made
or perhaps not made
in time,
I can look back upon it and recall,
in all
its pale forms sublime,
still
Death will never be holy again.



Something
―for the children of the Holocaust and the Nakba
by Michael R. Burch

Something inescapable is lost—
lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight,
vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars
immeasurable and void.

Something uncapturable is gone—
gone with the spent leaves and illuminations of autumn,
scattered into a haze with the faint rustle of parched grass
and remembrance.

Something unforgettable is past—
blown from a glimmer into nothingness, or less,
which finality swept into a corner, where it lies
in dust and cobwebs and silence.

This was my first poem that didn't rhyme, written in my late teens. The poem came to me 'from blue nothing' (to borrow a phrase from my friend the Maltese poet Joe Ruggier) . Years later, I dedicated the poem to the children of the Holocaust and the Nakba.



grave request
by michael r. burch

come to ur doom
in Tombstone;

the stars stark and chill
over Boot Hill

care nothing for ur desire;

still,

imagine they wish u no ill,
that u burn with the same antique fire;

for there's nothing to life but the thrill
of living until u expire;

so come, spend ur last hardearned bill
on Tombstone.



Keywords/Tags: Nuclear war, warfare, nuclear winter, Armageddon, Apocalypse, atom, death, oblivion, milestone, milestones, markers, tombstones, radiant, radiation, fallout, nukes, destruction, a-bomb, atomic bomb, hydrogen bomb, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Bikini Atoll, Manhattan Project, Trump