The cat circling
mine and your legs
begs

Food, please

shouting with
eager purrs, and
then
a view of its tail

Tears return
as we all will
to the ocean

Look ahead, and
the future erases the now

in two hundred years
these words
and
the many that have
surrounded them

will be lost, memories only
to dead lovers
friends and acquaintances
a lifetime past and
forgotten

The normals in the
pound shop
hedge their bets with
masks over
mouths and
noses out, sniffing
the air for signs that
the virus has gone

True protection
the kind that satisfies
comes from
plastics and sugar
the bright colours of
diabetic and sweat-shop delights
distracting
until the world is put right
by discussions online

I’d like to assure you
my faithful public, that
I AM NOT DEAD

but

its hard to be certain
and anyway

only God
and doctors
can see inside

Once

long before
nothing had happened

there was everything

optimism
and
hope

We looked into the window but the figure didn’t respond. Swathed in the most expensive of that season’s goods, it looked blankly to entice a materialistic world to enter the shrine and make offerings for the religion of credit. Nothing to do but to purchase. Besides, even the churches charged entry on a Sunday, now that God was just a figure selling entry to a tourist attraction.

If,

then,

later.

Exit.