There is no news today
Today, no news
How strangely
New today
Without the shouting
In the White House
The president hums
The Stars and Stripes forever
When making love
To his wife
Or almost anyone
With a dose of fluoxetine
Hair blown thin as gossamer
By his compassionate dreams
Of all out thermo-nuclear
War
An unfolding morning chrysanthemum
To atone for countless misdemeanours
In the quiet of apocalypse day
You can still dance with yourself
If you keep
An appropriate distance
The Holy Spirit in between
As you said, the Mercies used to say
Before they gave it up
For poetry and bingo
Seventy-seven
Gone to heaven
Seventy-eight
Heaven’s gate
With no one left to venerate
We all are martyred now
A cat, with a Rorschach face
Sidles by, asking if I have any doubts
As to human superiority
Inventory is all around
Like god, neatly arrayed
Pewed and tagged in Sunday’s best and legion
Though, the shelves
For those essential
Civilising products
Are nevertheless
Half empty, quiet as apocalyptic streets
Except for those two, fighting
As the last roll of TP unspools and stops
Still at my feet
Foregoing any ill-considered doubt
I pick it up
Ensconce it surreptitiously
How did you get in, I ask
The cat says
Shhhhh, with that familiar grin
I’m not really here
