Apocalypse poem #5–the apocalypse survivor kit

Lu Zenghai is building an ark
to float his family safe through what he thinks
is another flood coming & we laugh,
the way they laughed at Noah
because he is millenia out of fashion
in survival techniques

in the ’50s, 60s & ’70s
bomb shelters were the fashion
of the passionately paranoid
while we children crawled under desks
in school, whispering below
the shriek of sirens
singing down bombs
that never struck

as if planes were the real threat

what protection would those desks offer
from warheads that were aimed
but never deployed
just stockpiled in a race
with no winners

no–there was no running from that
no matter how deep you dug
or how thick you poured
concrete walls

the survivalists appeared again
for the Y2K disaster
that never happened
but they kept their propane tanks
& tinned beef/just in case

& now people of similar preparedness
bordering on insanity have catalogs
& order apocalypse survival kits,
backpacks heavy with water purifiers
& jerky.  the best have bullets
(gun not included)
for hunting or protecting
what earth
remains soft enough to till
or build on

odd, if you think of it
with most everyone else dead
& the planet empty to choose space from
what would be left worth killing

or worth fighting over
to own?

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• apocalypse poem #1 (susandanielspoetry.com)
• apocalypse poem #3 (daily faith) (susandanielspoetry.com)