Wednesday, April 3, 2013

30 Poems in 30 Days #3 - Lower Rung

FOUND RECORDED ON A HANDHELD DEVICE IN BURLINGTON, ONTARIO, DATED APPROXIMATELY JULY 2014 - 60 YEARS AGO.

You wanna know what terror is? Really know it? Lemme tell you how the jungle came to be everything, and its law became absolute.

They came from nowhere, twisted figments of factured remnants from some other existence, these things weren't the fuel of nightmares - they were the fire, and we a dry forest to be consumed.

No dogmatic description could detail the devils we saw - the empty Hell in their expressions - eyes a vibrant, cold cobalt, ringing an angelic beauty through a dead gaze that spoke only hunger, like the simple truth equated our deaths to their survival...their sustenance.

Their calm was the worst of it. Watch 'em pull off a limb like plucking an apple and eat it with the same resolved nature with which we would once have enjoyed a leg of chicken. We had gotten so comfortable at the top, we failed to realize that the food chain might have a missing link - and it might be higher than us. We've gone from lions to gazelles, except we're nowhere near fast enough. I've seen these things catch our fastest vehicles, tear engines out single-handed and reach through a windshield like cellophane to get at their meal.

You wanna know what terror is? It's watching something with every advantage consuming the flesh that was once you, and treating your screams as nothing more than a soundtrack to a dinner party.

There was no big invasion, no epic battle or pre-emptive warning. One day, they just walked among us. All eight feet of 'em. About one for every twenty or so of us. And they started eating. There's no struggle on their part - they'll lift us up like a parent holding up a petulant child and they'll do what they will. Our bodies can't hurt 'em. Our bullets can't hurt 'em. When the army tried to do what little they could, shit...these things were catchin' shells like basketballs in summertime.

Your best bet is to move as a group. These things aren't social...they don't hunt in packs. When you see one, I promise - it's seen you first. One of you is going to die then and there. The bigger your group, the higher a probability you make it out alive. Travel by yourself? Well...you'll last until you cross paths.

You wanna know what terror is? It's knowing that we're just flies, buzzing aimlessly around in a world newly populated with cruel children.

God...remember everything we did?

The science...the technology...the culture

We're running out of ears for Beethoven to ring in...

I mean, what was the point of naming all the stars we did?

These things don't care where Cassiopeia sits in the sky.

All they care about is where we are, and when to eat us.

All they care about

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