Some predictions

When our children come to be born,
Marred by coin slots on the bridge of their nose,
A debt to pay before their first breath,

Laughter, that familiar yet foreign sound,
Long discontinued on the grounds that jokes,
Waste time and time is money,
Coins don’t insert themselves,

At museums, children on school trips,
Stare with dull eyes at books behind glass cabinets,
The writing on the pages labelled as ‘hieroglyphics’,

Pale glazed faces in waiting rooms gaze,
At screens where cockroaches take to the stage,
Dressed to the nines in Calvin Klein,
Live from the White House, reading a public service announcement

A vapid land, sterile plaza buildings loom,
The streets below submerged in shadow,
Pasty skin that has forgotten how the sun used to kiss,

From the cockroaches mouth, a declaration of war,
Unlike those gone by before, we are assured,
Waiting for gunshots that will not come,
No ammunition, no bombs, only zero’s and one’s.

And though everyone wonders, nobody asks,
If perhaps we were wrong and the world is indeed flat,
Why else would so many of us go missing?