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The apocalypse was slow, a science of rumour,

just like in one of those McCarthyite B-movies

and not at all as depicted in the Book of Revelation

or similar sources. A stench on the horizon,

it appeared, initially, as a glob of chicken fat

you couldn’t dislodge from the back of your throat

no matter how much coughing and eructation.

Several months later came a heaving at the door

which when opened unleashed an avalanche

of discarded birthday cards and RSVPs.

A lake of bad cheques sluiced from beneath the bed,

islands of crusty socks buried your parents

who’d been sitting on the couch for weeks among

magazine cuttings, last month’s football pools,

completed sudokus, profaned betting slips,

missing jigsaw puzzle pieces, electric blanket boxes

and religious statues carved from blocks of soap.

Illicit receipts flurried from the u-bend

and snowed the landing. Houseflies that had snuffed it

in the plastic chandeliers of rented mobile homes

fell in a black hail. Pork fat, old margarine,

every iota of filth liquefied into unguents

and emerged unstoppable from gutters

to anoint passers-by, rendering them with

an attention to detail worthy of Pompeii.

A terracotta army lined the street before the job centre,

a Byzantine frieze of office temps

crept at elemental pace across the sky.

A Sahara of pencil shavings and biscuit crumbs

crystallised into exotic mineral formations

like fractal swirls building to infinity

as Gothic mezzanines of cigarette ends

and disposable nappies towered in the high streets

and we lived momentarily, but it might as well

have been forever in their shadow.

 

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