Earth Post Mortem

Joe Djordjevski

A city once full of life and color
now dead and colorless.
It is a graveyard of skyscrapers.
Tall, black skeletons.
Once proud and glorious edifices.
Now ruins. Some tilting to their side
others with chunks missing.
As far as the eye can see
these metallic gravestones litter the earth.
Blackened statues of leaders and heroes past
lie crooked and cracked.
Frozen forever in time.
Time catching up to them.
Tense clouds in the sky flex.
Soon they will burst into rain and thunder.

City streets once full of people and vehicles
lie desolate and empty.
Over grown plants and trees rise from cracked concrete.
Nature has taken over
what was once a people city. 
Crows and buzzards fly above.
Circling and circling
cawing at a disgusting pitch.
Old papers of past news and magazine advertisements
sweep through the empty streets
like leaves with the wind.
Wordless pages worn down with time.
A page from an old newspaper floats to my feet.
I can tell it had a hard life.
It is wrinkled, yet stiff.
Words are faded
and run down from water contact.
I can make out part of the headline.
It says “Apocalypse? The Fall of Western Civili…”
The rest of the sentence is a ghost
vanished from the paper.
I let it go.
It quickly gets back into its rhythm with the wind.
The wind whistles through the streets.
The only sound in the whole city
besides the crow’s and buzzard’s awful caws.
The sky starts to darken.
The old, decrepit streetlights are useless.
Now nothing more than support for ever-growing vines.
The vines that seem to pull on every thing they hold
down toward the ground
while the object they pull fights to stay on its feet.
The vines are too strong for them.
Soon they will all give in.

The wind stops and the debris and papers floating with it
succumb to gravity and fall to the earth.
A lone raindrop hits the black ground.
Smoke rises from the spot of asphalt the drop hits.
It is time to take cover
before more drops fall.
I run under what’s left of a rusted, metal overhang
once used for a café or a restaurant.
The countless pieces of debris
that litter the sidewalks and streets
begin to smoke as drops of rain splash against them.
A loud, high-pitched hiss from the smoking rain
pierces my eardrums.
Soon the whole city will be smoking
as the rain falls.
A terrible smell attacks my scent.
It smells of strong chemicals
unnatural to the senses.
Sharp and bitter
making my nostrils cringe.
I cover my mouth and my nose
with my cold, pale hand.
I take short breaths
trying to avoid the chemical smell.
The smoke soon embellishes the entire landscape.
It makes its way into my haven and clouds my vision.
I can no longer see anything but gray.
I go dizzy and nauseous.
I will be dead soon.
Like everyone else.