This is the Way the World Ends

For Paradise, California, 2018, destroyed by fire

This is the way the world ends,
In fire and ash,
With a dun sky and a darkened sun,
With a cough, a gasp, a choking scream.

This is the way the world ends,
In soot and stink,
In a burning house on a burning street,
In a burning town near a burning woods.

This is the way the world ends,
In a quick death,
Asphyxiation in a wall of flame
Sucking the air out of your lungs.

This is the way the world ends,
In blazing heat
That melts your flesh and dessicates
Your body into shards of bone.

This is the way the world ends,
In fire and ash.
It might have come another way,
By flood, or bullet, or your own hand;

But not for you,
No, this is the way it ends,
With a dark sun and a dirty sky,
In raging heat and wild flame.

This is the way the world ends.

Roger Stoll lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and has published articles, book reviews and political poetry in Black Agenda Report, Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, Internationalist 360, Jewschool, Marxism-Leninism Today, MintPress News, MRonline, New Verse News, Orinoco Tribune, Popular Resistance, Resumen Latinoamericano, San Francisco Examiner, and ZNet. Read other articles by Roger.