Gone is the freshness of warm summer rain,
Gone are the words which brought me to shame.
Gone are the birds, aloft in the sky,
Gone are the flowers, which in fields lie.

Gone is the comfort of family life,
Gone is the husband; gone like his wife.
Gone all the insects and all the beasts.
Gone are traditional Christmas Day feasts.

Gone all the laughter, gone all the joy,
Gone every girl and gone every boy.
Gone are the trees, down to the last beech,
Gone is TV and the freedom of speech.

Gone is the sun, burning yellow to red
Gone like the darkness present instead.
Gone are the books, all our fine written work,
Gone are our minds, in which monsters lurk.

Gone are the parks, and small empty swings,
Gone into the silence that nothingness brings.
Gone is the knowledge of present and past,
Gone is the belief that everything lasts.

Gone is all anger, all sorrow, all woe,
Gone into the void where emotions don’t show.
Gone is the wonder, the chance to create,
Gone into the same place as malice and hate.

Gone now are our friends, all of our kin.
Gone too our vices and gone is our sin.
Gone are the places in which creatures roam.
Gone our nobility, thrall upon throne.

Gone, all of this, in the blink of an eye,
Gone all the people who could have asked why.
And gone last of all, like a leaf on the breeze,
Is the image of God, brought down on His knees.

Pic

I wrote this poem many years ago. So long ago, in fact, that I can’t even remember what it was about. I’d guess it was about the end of the world, but it might’ve been about depression, or it may have been about androids replacing us all (because that’s what androids do. Damn you, androids! *shakes fist*). So, take your own meaning from it. Or don’t! Clearly, this was important enough to me to save for all these years, and it even survived the Great Hard-Drive Crash of 2014 (when so much of my other work didn’t) so now I’m sharing it with you interwebfolk.