Poems for Monsters #7: The Wasteland Mutant

Bad news kid: we've propagated your wavefront
into the worst future yet. We tried
for paradise, maybe some place
with long summers and access to a beach,

but nope, it's your standard wasteland -
piles of slag, old bones of homes,
the whole Earth a dried dingleberry
dangling from the Sun. Meanwhile

you slouch along bearing classic mutant signs: pustules,
mad eyeballs buzzing in sockets, teeth
like a dropped deck of cards, tattered brown tunic,
brain devouring its carrion of days.

Somewhere up ahead beyond the fortified malls
a girl maybe runs barefoot, or rock shelves
shelter clear water - who knows?
We're shutting down
the machines and moving on to the next universe. Good luck.