Not If, But When Poem by David Whalen

Not If, But When?

Dim sunrise on a gray, smoky city
Cars line the roads, slowly rusting
Winds blowing ash, harsh and gritty
Acidic smog gives an evil dusting

Tires melted to pavement, rubber pools of blackness
Window Glass sagging from kiln-like heat
All move no more due to nuclear madness
In gutters, white bones scoured by gray caustic sleet

Destinations and drivers no longer exist
no organic life forms survive
Only wind blown gray ash and solitude persist
Where aspirations and ambitions did thrive

Empty buildings pleading for workers to toil
Winds moaning through windowless walls
Papers bubbling about in a bleak breezy boil
Family photos dance gaily in deserted dark halls

City streets decorated with bizarre ornamentation
Shards of glass strewn about by explosive power
Like diamonds on black tar, the macabre decoration
Grows more ashen and gray by the hour

Faces on billboards cancerously peeling
While timelessly smiling and hawking their wares
Wood rotting, braces failing, perilously reeling
signs malignantly moulting, shedding their cares

Suitcases scattered, open, pillaged and torn
Contents long ago blown away
Like the doomed souls that carried them, sad and forlorn
In and on melted pavement they lay

Wires draped from poles like funereal bunting
No current, no messages to bear
Gray spider-like webs, the strands seem to be hunting
For purpose, for signals… not there


Playgrounds deserted, charred swing seats awry
Slides rusting, tilting, small bones lay exposed
No squeals, no laughter, no kids running by
Monkey bars droop sadly, morose in repose

Religion, politics, gone to obsolescence
Purple vestments faded to brown
poisonous gas, ungodly essence
Church steeples toppled, bells sunk in the ground

Burned black, stunted trunks, a few withered branches
Like a forest of dark hooded monks at prayer
Natures been violated yet no one blanches
There’s simply…no one……there