Sanity’s Ashes
by Odin Roark

For today,
there is but a subliminal haze.

Soon…

They’ll realize spring as summer,
an impatient today rapidly becoming
tomorrow’s scorched yesterday.

They’ll remind themselves
of gardens once blooming,
now dust bowls of wind-driven regret
shrouding what’s left behind nature’s
pawn shop windows.

Then…

They’ll send afloat their final thoughts,
for ghostwriters to begin striking their polished keyboards,
creating another tome perpetuating another unswerving pattern of man’s failure.

They’ll ponder the dark collecting quickly
as their rising flotsam of denial
hitches up with commerce trade winds aplenty,
eager to satisfy more covetous progress
waiting among the many heads-in-clouds.

They’ll spend their final hours
watching their neighboring countries
bloviate established ritual chameleon-greed
as power’s gluttony exhausts
the remaining rations for survival.

Finally

Beneath ashen density,
remaining embers will radiate
what’s left of fate’s losing battle,
revealing demonic faces parading angelic wings,
readying their blind eyes
for the final silence
of sanity’s ashes.