by Frank Walsh
Looks like I am
the last man on Earth
as if an atom bomb dropped not here
but over New York
maybe I’m the only one left
until of course
wandering the vacant streets
and littered plazas for some can goods
I discover, as the apocalyptic
yarn went, the last woman
scantily clad in a cracked
phone booth that doesn’t work.
She’s screaming into the receiver
for her husband and kids
like there’s no tomorrow
which a matter of fact there is.
And then under a sky that is a sound effect
it dawns on me that what are the chances of this
phone booth being on the deserted city corner
in the first place, a coincidence? Was it supposed
to be the last phone booth on Earth when before
the Apocalypse nobody and their mother
could ever find a pay phone as the authorities
had removed almost every last one by then
blaming juvenile delinquents and pushers
the public pay phone going the way of the family
amusement park or the neighborhood basketball
court and the point 1, O! blood alcohol
percentage.
Dial tone
What else was there at one time
just didn’t add up unless
it all made sense that it was
another sequel of the Children of the Damned
in the Village of the Damned and damned
in this damn World I found myself
besotted, misbegotten, different from them”
the pre-pubescent blonde haired straightened
bleach conditioner and Prussian blue eyed
Kinder of legal tender rendered perfect if not
alien under the cell-phone pay to play higher
technocracy who were in the process of world
domination before the shit hit the fan
when the grid goes down
and out for the count
from zero for naught
the ghost of the atomic
energy commission would
have to know what it’s all about, Alfie
The indifferent towers and citadels of business
bilked to the gills and not a soul in site
there’s nothing and no need to on my mind
no reason to search the parameter for signs
I just drift off to another free lunch
while the supply lasts and the candles hold
back the tears of this perfect dark night
since I dream of things as they should
as I dream again of being the last in line.
3/2007.