You go to sleep and wake to a steady drip
and wonder if it’s radioactive or pure and clear,
like the streams you once knew.
Above ground, no fresh water remains:
no trace of rain
or cloud or sky.
There is just the twilight of your cave,
the weak rays that find their way
through fissures in the ceiling,
a distant sun revealing itself in your shelter,
bouncing helter-skelter
to the maze below.
Damp steals everything unless you shut it up tight,
but even the cans you stacked so neatly have rusted;
the labels peeled off long ago and every day’s a surprise.
If only you could give it all just to see the sun rise,
to swim in the ocean, cleanse your filthy skin
that you must live in all alone until you too are vaporised.
Kim M. Russell, 7th November 2019
My response to dVerse Poets Pub Meet the Bar by Changing Your Perspective, also linked to earthweal, Open Link Weekend
Björn is our host today and he’s talking about points of view in poetry. He says that poets tend to get stuck in one or a few familiar ones and wants us to consider the advantages of the various perspectives.
Björn asks us to go out of our comfort zones and change the perspective. We can either start from a poem we’ve written and/or posted previously and change its perspective, or simply write from a perspective we’re not used to. I took a poem I wrote and posted on 7th September, changed its perspective, line length, form and title.
writing in north norfolk 
What a bleak poem, Kim. Makes you wonder if it’s worth surviving…
My stand-out lines were: bouncing helter-skelter
to the maze below.
and:the labels peeled off long ago and every day’s a surprise.
Interestingly, they are both potentially happy lines, but in this context they are terrible. I mean, they inspire terror…
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It is a bleak poem; I’d hate to be the last person on earth.
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Yes, I agree. This is very dark and bleak. Reminds me of 10 Cloverfield Lane…
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Thanks Linda. I’d forgotten about that film.
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I really like the perspective of writing it in second person, and I actually I feel it even stronger… I feel myself being trapped in that cave, and I think it’s an excellent evidence how the same poem can change with perspective.
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That’s what I thought after I rewrote it, Bjorn. It’ didn’t seem much of a change as I was doing it, but as I read it afterwards I could feel it.
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One of the first short stories I ever wrote, when I was 13, was about a family running from atomic bombs in the city, to a cave they had outfitted for survival. In my tale, like a dystopian Anne Frank, no one survived.
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I read a fabulous book recently, set in the UK, called A Boy and his Dog at the End of the World. It’s an excellent read.
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When water turns into an enemy is one of the grimmest scenarios I can imagine. It’s like an auto-immune disorder of the planet 😦 You did a great job of creating a bleak setting of the end.
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Thank you, Jade.
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You’re welcome.
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The poem is good though.
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🙂
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Excellent dystopian poem when water becomes your enemy.
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Thank you, Toni.
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A dark world indeed. (K)
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I scared myself with this one, Kerfe.
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I am pulled in by the post apocalyptic feel of this. Suspenseful!
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Thank you, Viv!
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😊- my comment box is open now😊
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Dark and powerful.
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Thank you, Ayala.
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This made me cringe but I think that is an appropriate response to this bleak circumstance. The line that I liked most, “the labels peeled off long ago and every day’s a surprise.”
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I’m glad my poem had that effect on you, Ali!
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This feels like a glimpse of what may come to be. Dark and mysterious in nature.
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The possibility of it becoming a reality grows every day. I wish we had better world leaders who really cared.
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Perhaps this could be called After the Meltdown! Well done Kim.
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Thanks Dwight!
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Only the second poem I am reading tonight and they are both very dark! Well done Kim. You have painted a very dark picture of how things could so easily be in the future. 😦
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Thank you so much, Christine. 🙂
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Hopefully, we won’t see this day.
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dark, sad
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Thanks Sabio.
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Second person is so oracular, is it not? Holding up a bone and bidding it to sing … Such vision it allows, stepping neatly around the personal infinity and the god who observes. A piercing eye here for the unseeable and unsayable.
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Thanks Brendan.
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I went with 2nd person-POV, too! An evocative and sobering write, Kim!
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Thanks Frank. Second person can be so much fun.
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So bleak and poetic! The lines were so compelling and thought evoking! Amazing work😊 I was wondering if you could checkout my new piece on ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & JOBS OF THE PAST!And I would really appreciate it if you could comment some feedback to improve the writing style. Looking forward to hearing from you. – Kiran
https://kiranninprogress.wordpress.com/2019/12/04/artificial-intelligence-jobs-of-the-past/
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Thank you, Kiran. I will be over to read your new piece in the next few days.
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These end-of-world visions are so difficult and yet necessary for a poet’s full plumage to show. Catholics know that depictions of hell are so much more lavish than sketches of heaven. Well done.
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Thank you, Brendan. Anything’s possible, as we’ve just found out.
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Wow, this is a powerful perspective indeed, one we need to keep in mind in making the choices we make todaY. So well done.
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Thank you, Sherry.
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Are you also planning to hide in a cave, Kim? I just need to stock up on tins of beans, find a little-known one and start hiding them…hope I don’t forget the can opener!
Joking aside, this is a sobering look at a future the ‘lucky’ survivors of the Antropocene era might be faced with. At least now we don’t have to worry about Trump further accelerating us along the path to destruction!
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Luckily, I don’t need a cave, Ingrid. I have my little haven here. Our village is the perfect place to hole up. I have a can opener that works now, too! I want to forget about Trump and his awful family, but I fear he won’t shut up until he’s locked up.
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