“Your attention please!”
Bellowing from the skies, from the speakers on the high rise, but you mustn’t trust the speaker’s lies.
“This is not a drill,” it bored, but it was, and it’s heresy was shrill.
“I repeat, this is not a drill!”
The city stopped, the city froze, there’s an apocalyptic odour the city collectively knows.
A shallow sigh emanates from the narrow streets, and the bustling footsteps halt their beats.
All bar one, the beating heart of a baker’s son –
A reprehensible and confused cobbler’s son.
“Please proceed to the nearest shelter immediately.”
Perhaps there was a truth to what the spitter said, perhaps fact could be grasped from the sitter’s head.
Only a prophet could speak these words, only believe them if they double in thirds.
“What?”
Raise your hands to the speaker bands and rejoice for the love they send, the strings they bend.
There was a panic from all those around, so much chaos that internal reason was drowned.
Parties pulled and pushed through the crowd, rowdy ravagers rioted aloud.
“Risk it, risk it.”
The lonely blacksmith’s son stood, risk it – risk it now. Good, good, good.
Lights shining from the sky, where the speaker resides, where the spitter hides, the voice subsides.
“I repeat, proceed to the nearest shelt…”
Lies! Where are those spies, where do they hide?
Gripped at the seams of dreams, the maiden’s son follows the crowded streams, for this is real, to him at least.
The ants below scream as their Messiah’s beam their way down below, down below.
Blocks and blocks north of there, nuns bow in prayer and nurses argue their share.
“Has anyone found Emmitt yet?”
“Wasn’t my turn to watch him hun.”
Emmitt – the Foreman’s son.
“How does he keep getting out?” the nurse cries.
“Doesn’t matter Jeanie, look at the skies. We have to get to the bunker!”
The blanketed sheath blotched the Earth’s crust, and all those opposed vaporised to dust.
All those WERE opposed save for Emmitt, a diagnosed schizophrenic, with no concept of it.
“Angels! Angels! Or demons of old,” did the revolutionist’s son aptly scold.
No-one, no-one around paid attention to that sound, stampeding along the ground, the shelter must be found.
Wicked beasts, pulling and pushing through the crowd, but to Emmitt the humming of the missiles was too loud.
Watch it, watch it son, why do those around him run, run, run?
Emmitt – the shop keep’s son, did not run, but kept his cool in the fiery sun.
It burns! Wait, look at that kid. What is it that that kid did?
A lucid moment shines through and he looks up to the sky, the sky that’s orange, green, and blue.
In the distance an explosion rings true, the thunderous roar sings like a musical score.
The composer’s son prances along with the bandicoots and dances through the storm.
Traffic comes to a halt, and the dog he saw before, the dog now a victim of assault.
Crushed by the apes and Emmitt – the pilot’s son, sat down and filmed it eating grapes.
My baby, my baby, where could she be? The tornado swept her off my knee.
They’re coming, someone stop them, someone stop, before the walnuts drop.
Even closer than before, the missiles fall onto a store, and Emmitt leans against a door.
What is this? What is this?
The kid across the street waves as their skin melts off their face, and the hair on their head shaves.
He falls to the floor, and the dog begs for more, licking his face, the radioactive waste.
Trust me, trust me…
Trust me.
They didn’t make it, not everyone made it, not everyone felt it.
The marshal’s son grabs a lute and tries to play it like a flute. He can see the music and it’s beautiful.
He drops the drum and grabs a young man by the thumb.
“Where are you from?”
The man turns and shakes his head, blood runs down his cheek but it’s not red.
Eyes widening, Emmitt laughs, “it’s green, green, green.”
With a grin the man could kill, “This is not a drill, drill, drill.”
Across the road a squirrel waves as his nuts misbehave and it falls into a grave.
“Look up.”
Emmitt – the accountant’s son, looks down instead of up, and picks up a toy gun.
He raises it to the cat and shoots so that’s the end of that and the cat flies with wings of brush.
There is no man and is no hope and is no leaf and is no soap.
Well he picks up the soap that’s grey and says he’s not washing himself today. The bear will do it. The pink one. Or I’m not the professor’s son.
The tornado is back, it lives in the sewer, out of the bin he eats a shish kabob skewer.
The humming dials it up to twenty five, this is the most he’s felt alive, let’s go now for a dumpster dive.
The missile hits, it saved his arm, it saved him from some grievous harm.
Once he’s out another flies, hits him right between the eyes.
Poor Emmitt dies.
In the padded room of an institution, the nurses did not come up with a solution, to save his life from decades of pollution.
Emmitt – the schizophrenic’s son, did not have a pleasurable run, if only he’d been sane enough to buy a gun.
In his last moments he hears a voice in the distant breeze.
“Your attention please!”
Introspective Poetry 