Future Ape

Crash!
Bang!
Wallop!

The tidal wave of an asteroid splash

Drowns the rainforest we’ve finally learned to conserve

And we glance up to the pale red dot.

Humanity’s last chance,

Vanished in an armageddon,

Long since the last breath escaped Bruce Willis.

We die hard.

Driftwood from the Amazon sea

Becomes the coal of a future generation

Of amphibious octopuses,

Who’ll learn to combust it all the same,

Eventually.

The humans drift among the stars,

Existing on synthetically-derived products,

Yearning to return to a pale blue dot

Of balmy seas and infinite infinities.

Life on Mars,

Dubai was the practise run -

When the baking sands

Become too inhospitable,

The oil long since gone,

The caliphate will fly.

Beyond Burj Khalifa,

A million miles and more,

High on the sands

Of a cold, red planet

Barely insulated by

The distant sun.

But no matter how far we run,

We can’t escape the light.

On the Run,

From the Dark Side of the Moon,

No wormhole will take us beyond the bounds

Of the finite universe we traverse.

Mars,

Just a stepping stone to oblivion,

Perhaps a few centuries later than was forecast.

By the time we reach Andromeda,

Everything we knew will have passed.

The end of the world.

A hot sphere blazing red,

Searing flesh and melting roads,

Blocked as the exodus

In vain tries to reach

The dark side of the globe.

The end of the road.

At the speed of light,

Ages crumble into ages past.

The Super Ape expires, at last.