Aphelion Issue 301, Volume 28
December 2024 / January 2025
 
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Death Ships

by Stephen Jarrell Williams


Dogs racing through the cluster of trees,
breathless and aching, too tired to bark.
All the world animals fleeing the Death Ships...

Oh God, why have you forsaken us?
These creatures in their flying machines,
islands blotting out the clouds...

I am alone in my horror. All the world screaming.
I've buried myself in a tunnel
up to my neck, camouflaged my face and head
with limp leaves and cigarette butts...

I smell
the ashes of our best days...

Cities crumbling in flames.
Countrysides scraped raw.
People sucked from the ground like ants.

Today is the last Friday.
The weekend is truly the end.

Only a few of us specks will survive for a time.
I'll keep you informed.
You... the deceased.

Your spirits in the wind of smoke.


© 2010 Stephen Jarrell Williams

Stephen Jarrell Williams has been called "The Poet of Doom," "A Voice in the Wilderness," and "A Minstrel for Love." He was born in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. His parents are native Texans. He has lived most of his life in California. His poetry has appeared in Aoife's Kiss, Aphelion, Blue Collar Review, The Broome Review, Camroc Press Review, Censored Poets, Chronogram Magazine, Deuce Coupe, Fissure Magazine, Freefall, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Hawaii Review, Heroin Love Songs, Hungur, Is This Reality, Kalkion, Liquid Imagination, Mad Swirl, Metazen, Mirror Dance, Neonbeam, Nerve Cowboy, Nomad's Choir, POEM, Poesia, Posey, protestpoems.org, Purpose, REAL, Rusty Truck, Scifaikuest, Sex And Murder, Shoots And Vines, Tales from the Moonlit Path, Thieves Jargon, Zygote In My Coffee, and others.

Find more by Stephen Jarrell Williams in the Author Index.

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