Fallout

A new day dawns in shadow,

Sun peeks in vain,

Over cloud-covered horizons,

Unseen above darkness,

Over lawns of dust and debris, winds waned,

Shattered, scattered pawns, desolate wakes of war.

We were waking to reality.

To smell the ashes of the new age.

Sorrowful rains poured from broken hearths and broken hearts,

Survivors clawed from under and over piles of corpses to reach the morning air,

The rancid rubble spoke of our ruin, painted,

Awash with the spattered blood.

Our pangs sang in unison as we woke up to smell the ashes of the new age,

Of desperate, desecrated desires, ringing ears unwillingly recalled,

Daisy exhibiting tongue-biting, hair-tearing, pale-faced, wide-eyed terror, crying over an empty pair of little blue shoes.

Jack hacking through dust and debris, struggling to breathe enough to think,

As with the dawn, more comprehension of our calamity tore out screams between tears and sirens of blasts and blistering skies that echoed in our minds,

The monsters of metal and ore concoctions created and let slip to be unleashed as dogs of war by hands and minds like our own.

Those who would bleed red and taste the rain just as we do,

If they stood among those of us still left with life and limb enough to stand.