11-08-2025, 02:01 AM
Shelf Life
The mushroom clouds
bloomed above our cities
leaving only
cockroaches and engineered sponge cake
filled with sweetened, stabilized fat
that still couldn't be called food,
but it did survive.
Apples could melt on trees,
but sorbic acid and Polysorbate 60 were eternal.
Perhaps we were spared by the chemicals within us,
joined with the roaches
in this cream-filled wasteland.
The mushroom clouds
bloomed above our cities
leaving only
cockroaches and engineered sponge cake
filled with sweetened, stabilized fat
that still couldn't be called food,
but it did survive.
Apples could melt on trees,
but sorbic acid and Polysorbate 60 were eternal.
Perhaps we were spared by the chemicals within us,
joined with the roaches
in this cream-filled wasteland.
The secret of poetry is cruelty.--Jon Anderson