When the end comes 
will you be able to sit with it

and keep telling yourself
it is all going to be OK? 

Are you willing to find a park bench
upon which to sit by yourself

in the last green grove on earth
and tell yourself this too shall pass?

Think about how you are trying
to make the best of this, of how

everything you’ve known till now
is coming to a point:

all existence squeezed into a dot now,
a pencil mark

on a dirty scrap of paper;
the world compressed to a period

at the end of
a sentence fragment,

and it’s harder that ever to recall
what that sentence was.

It made sense.
That’s all you know. 

It was uttered by someone
you loved, or could have loved. 

All you’ve got to go on
is one faded period and 

an illegible word
to puzzle over. Same as it has been

for most of existence: broken puzzles
are offered with great authority

and finality. No answer, no clues.
All you have to do is figure it out

and speak it for it to be real. Are you willing?
Are you ready to have this be the way it ends? 

When you look outside
expecting trumpets and fire
and all you hear is the drone
of photo opps legions seeking 
clicks and likes and affirmations
from the devils or angels they prefer

Peeking past the blinds
into a gray morning with no
distinguishing features beyond 
unseasonable weather and more 
humans signing on the street these days
jerking drug dances for survival

When you turn with a headshake back around
to the relative warmth of shabby rooms and rugs
and your yet to fail walls and aged thin pipes
it all doesn’t seem as bad as the trumpets
and fires you expected at this point
since you are warm and for the moment aecure

You raise a shout and toss a dance move
A wipe of the forehead and a raised glass
A song to whatever lord you think has saved you
from the trumpets and the fire and the nights in the cold
Forgetting the imminent snuffing of all candles and lanterns
You exhale in uneasy and unwarranted relief