Miraquill
The Roach
at The End of The World
I scuttle over the rubble and gravel,
bursts of polluted and thinning air
spitting through my thorax;
the surrounding areas are quiet,
quelled of predators for now.
My antennas spread apart,
sensing on one side, fire-
on the other, overwhelming flood-
straddling the line between
two explosively extreme forcefields;
but still, I sense no need for movement,
I stand atop a rock and watch
as the earth implodes on itself;
only when it comes close enough to me
will my legs spike up the senses
to finally scurry away.
My eyes, like a million tiny televisions,
surveying the sickened landscape-
dead trees, animal corpses
hidden within wood reduced
to blackened skeletons,
waters slim and breeding stagnation,
fauna and flora on fire,
buildings leveled back to the ground-
rows and rows
of open graves and desolation.
No fleshy monsters
left to stomp us out, their every legacy
decomposing in forgotten lethargy.
We, the roaches, the last beings left
for no reason at all- the wind
blowing faraway ash between my wings,
old clay and mud stuck to my legs,
the red sun seen from 360°- I see
everything- my dark eyes are omnipotent.
Fire and flood comes to cause balance
after man's all around destruction;
where there occurs the death of a species,
there will soon arrive the birth of the next.
I am a cockroach, and I will survive
to see it all.
I spread my thick eight inch wings,
to fly through the ill-boding air,
the currents carrying such heavy wastage
along with their silence.
My species, we watched all the others
die away in droves. We, the victorious few,
soaring by with no home to return to,
we feed on the rot, thrive on dying herbs;
Death's gifts to nature, with verve we
gobble all and go forward.
Then, amidst the sanguine horizon,
in a flash I see
my unwitting brother, caught mid-air
by a bird in its merciless beak.
In self preservation I touch back down
to see a slick spider, all menace and fangs
zooming its way along the ground for me.
My own family, torn apart for each
eye to see, to compound the truth,
that we were not omnipotent!
The final, palm-sized remnants
of an expiring world, one moment growing,
green and lush for all of us-
the next, turned to ruins
from fleshy monster's broken touch!
My stridulation falls
on derelict vibrations,
with no one left to sound back or listen.
So I am caught in the mouth of the devil,
punctured head filling with venom,
but my body breaks free
and barrels astray from my brain-
all thoughts and memories eaten away,
now just a walking zombie, clotted shell,
alive in apocalyptic hell-
because only
when you think you are safest
does the seemingly distant danger become
close enough to slaughter everyone.
The roach with a head
may gloat and boast- we were so close!-
but now mine is lost, tossed,
ripped from me forever,
mercilessly leaving me doomed
to loom under
this burning sky as I slowly die,
so that from my old flames,
a new terrain
can arise.
©in_fragments
#cockroaches
4 posts-
in_fragments
26w
Read MoreCockroaches are super interesting creatures. They can live for weeks after losing their heads to predators, and have their own fantastic capacity for memory. They'd even be likely survive a nuclear apocalypse. What do you think the very last cockroaches will see? What kind of world will it be?
#pod #poem #cockroaches #narrative #story @miraquill @writersnetwork @writersbay10 0 4
syllabic_writer
112w
The Conqueror
We evolve day by day.
Dated back to millions of days.
Remains in trillions of millions,
fight and outlive the hardest of times.
We,take a wing at the pulse of need,
Leaped through the darkness with thinnest of hope,
Till we end up in labs around
For the future to go on.
Don't mistake me by filthy human!
I am no silly human.
I am the conqueror cockroach,
the one who survives the death.
©syllabic_writer | Gopika Nikhil12 2 1
james_taumas
156w
Underground
Underworld realm
The discarded
The ignored
Overworld trash
Washup on fatberg shores
Living in obsidian night
Verrmin and other paws
Exoskin life flourish
Survival's sole law
Lights fear
No one treads alone
©james_taumas0 0
jordynbrower
182w
Pink Clouds
The billows of the tides stalk me no where I go.
Talk about a clasped locket,
No longer secure in pink clouds,
Which molest the saddening tides
With deceiving strokes of time.
They stiffly rise as the cockroaches proceed the current
Into a revering tale.
Presume the deep were to shadow me,
And I greet those insects within a time piece.
Who is not to say that one should sink rather than swim?
Guaranteed, there is always floating.
But I am no doll existing on an eternal shelf.
Rather, I am a twisting termite
Who shivers at the bottom of the dead sea,
Cloaked in dust,
Blanketed in oblivious memories,
And masked in pink clouds.
©jordynbrower