To continue is apocalyptic vein, this is my response to today’s ekphrastic challenge from Paul Brookes. You can see the images and read the responses here.
Afterwards
when the trees creep away from the rain
that burns and scorches,
when we cannot see the edge of the cliff,
waves mounting,
and the ocean writhes with mutated life,
garish as electric cables, penicillin-livid,
when our Petri dish overflows
with the sewage of the squeezed out bowels
of seven billion bodies,
will we use all those proud flags
to make winding sheets
for the dead on all those little hills?
The Four Swans 
Will anyone be around to make the flags? 😔
A definite apocalypse poem. (I’ve got one coming up–I think it’s tomorrow.) And you got petri dish into this one. We must be the same person. 😉
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Don’t tell me you have a poem with Petri dish in it? There are so many parallels, it wouldn’t surprise me.
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I had to check. It was my “Jiving Beats” poem on Day 25. So funny. 🙂
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I’ve just been to look at the Day 25 poems and I didn’t see your name on any of them. Found the petri dish though. Can’t remember if I checked on your blog that day.
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🙂
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That’s an excellent question. But of course Merril is right–we will all be gone. (K)
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Nobody will care by then.
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You should have used Ragnarok and Roll instead of ‘apocalypse.’ Because that’s the magic word for the new Ali Baba… Apo Kalypso… “Open the door, Kalypso”. That’s the etymology in a paraphrase. This would dredge up end times that symbolise denial and vicarious living, a zombification of the spirit, an aviici of the soul. They would turn their rivers into sludge and then advertise its purity while trying to sell it to each other. Your poem still lacks some apocalyptic spirit, Jane… etymologically speaking.
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It is very similar to the phenomenon of The Great Uncorking! It is easy to get the two mixed up. It’s a matter of scale.
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Not sure I understand what you mean. I didn’t use ‘apocalypse’ in the poem but it’s in the mood we call apocalyptic ie when wicked nature just rolls over and gives up. Etymologically I thought it came from the Greek for ‘revelation’ as used in the Gospel of whoever it was. Revelation is never a good word to describe any human experiences because we don’t ever have them. Ragnarök is also not quite right, as it implies a battle between good and evil, quite a stretch when it’s gods we’re talking about. We, mankind are entirely responsible for the extinction though the image of utter destruction works, whoever, man or gods, is responsible. I posted another pessimistic one today.
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I was just teasing you a little. My joke fell flat, it would seem. It’s actually ‘take the lid off’, I think. I am not quite sure any more.
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I know it was a tease, but there was some truth in it that I couldn’t quite get at. I like to know what people mean 🙂
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I have lost my train of thought 🤔 can’t quite remember. I think that there was a feeling that you held back a little on some important aspect of this theme. I do not want to revisit this. I am not quite up to the task now, mentally speaking. It was about the ‘animating’ principle of life dwindling away to nothing, I think. You did not quite hit that on the head, which I thought was a pity, since your poem excelled in the other aspects. That might be what I was trying to say. Nobody really dances any more.
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I think you might be crediting me with more talent than I possess. I write off the top of my head with my eyes half closed and don’t think too deeply. Maybe I should. You’re right, I don’t dive down deep enough, just throw down the first thoughts and leave it at that, move on. I’ll have another look at this one in the light of what you’ve said, and see if I’m up to your expectations xx
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