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Truisms for an Apocalypse
David Sandner

The end of the world never changes.
But don’t worry:
A knife in the gut still hurts like hell,
and worse if you twist it, right?
And a smile’s a smile the world round, yes?
A smile’s a smile the world round.


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Burning (with apologies to Stevie Smith)
David Sandner

Not waving but burning.
Standing right in front of you,
engulfed in flames, writhing in pain.
Hello? Wtf?
OK, now I’m hugging you and you’re on fire.
We’re both writhing in pain.
Neither one of us is waving—we’re on fire!
To hell with you!
Someone else runs up and he’s yelling:
“roll on the ground!”
He has a blanket.
We grab him in a hug and he’s on fire.
He tries to drop and roll but we hold him up.
I feel raw and fully alive
because I am fully dying,
and I want the pain to stop so badly
I only wish I would burn hotter.
The last thing is:
we flip open the gas on the oven and the stove
so it doesn’t even matter the other guy
is free and rolling on the ground
because it’s too late all around
and we are all going up together as smoke.
Forever not knowing
everyone else isn’t waving either,
but the explosion shakes me as close as I’ll ever get
to forgiveness.

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Artwork: The Woods Are Dark and Sticky by Will Jacques

But There Are Worse Things
David Sandner

Do you hear them the dead?
That’s no wind that sloughs the trees.
Many have been murdered here
in the darkest part of the wood.
The dead cry in misery at our
hearts beating a wild tattoo.
They would hold us in a cold embrace forever.

But there are worse things…

We have wandered too far from home
And those eyes watching from the shadows
are monsters. They stalk us,
slavering in hunger for their prey.
They would scratch out our eyes,
dismember us, drink our marrow.
They wait only for the moon
t o slip behind the clouds to strike.

But there are worse things…

Many have come to this bleak crossroads
to dance with witches round a bonfire
in a dead field among the trees
just off the road,
until the devil joined in
and they howled, out of their minds
with joy and dread,
and shook the devil’s hand in a black bargain
that forfeits a soul they disbelieved in
until they lost it.
Do you see its light in the dim
behind the trees?

But there are worse things…

For the light in a window waiting for you
is too far forever
and the night will
scatter the sun to embers
and all our lovers will be but bones
and our heat dispel into stillness
and silence
because distance and darkness
is the truest state of all things, everywhere
in our malign universe.

But there are worse things…

For now I betray you
before you betray me,
my more than brother.
You think you sounded the depths of your deformed heart
but I beat you to it.
I have led you here to die.
I shall hear your last slobbered pleas for life
with disgust, then self-satisfied malice,
and I shall rob your corpse
but not for avarice. And I shall
kill you but not for hate,
only because there is nothing
else to do when the sun neglects us
and the night enfolds us and whispers
sweet nothing is all and I stab out
from the dark side of the moon
to make them stop—
yet still something tells me, insistent:

But there are, there are, there are,
but there are worse things….

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