On Monday October 16th 2017: Science Fiction made real
‘We’re the new martians..’
Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
Today, London was Mars. Hurricane sand on the skyline.
The light suffused strangely, shards from a wounded sun
Bound by ghosts. Clouds seemed creased. Breath was pinched.
As a foreshadowing haze fell around us. Streets became television
Broadcasting some of the thoughts men fear most.
It was the end of the world. A kind of retrograde science fiction.
Looking up one imagined some nucleur plant mushrooming.
There was a fuse in the world that had suddenly sparked
Non-existence, and one could hear the throat tighten
And the demonic horde start to sing.
The sky was a dome, its features glazed by one colour,
Almost as if the next planet was calling to us through the storm.
Lifeless in look, it still retains buried secrets.
Was it once our own future, or is its red printed fate still to form?
There was a merging, through sand, of Mars and Earth, that’s for certain.
And in a way the God planet was nudging us all across space.
These hurricanes are the breaths of an unknown force as it rises,
Edging our world out of comfort until its decline scars the face.
Sand in the air. Nothing apocalyptic. No worry.
Apart from a sun turned to crimson, angry at human dissolution
And the keenness to end its own race.
The sky was a warning today. One saw a dissolve of each image.
In which oncoming doom and destruction was painting us all into place.