Suppose some promised catastrophe you seldom succumb to imagining

has, just now, stopped still not happening.

Suppose that last stark threshold, the one they’ve said all along (OK but for real this      

time) we must never blunder beyond,

is already joining all those others we’ve left behind.

 

Suppose, were this a movie (which don’t worry it won’t be), this moment’d be that cut

between

the taut close-up on a bright zero closing out the countdown

and a silent wide shot across the impact zone.

 

Suppose that whether this news leaves you resigned or frantic, complicit or confessed,

distraught, defiant, or bitter,

does not (and not once did and now as it has turned out never will) matter.

 

Suppose the coming days will make our folly’s (though that won’t be the name they use

for it) inheritors envious

of (and this should really tell you something) us.

Suppose venality plus inertia. Suppose we’ll worry about it then, or we’ve made mistakes before.

Then suppose terror and remorse. Suppose the anguish of irredeemable loss. Suppose

blame. Suppose despair.

You can also suppose (though I don’t recommend it) how we just missed (so close!)

some nicer, non-nemesis-ridden, future.

Now suppose, as a kind of relief though not really but whatever,

how there won’t be time for all that once it (i.e. catastrophe) gets here.

 

Suppose at least we won’t have to talk about it ever again. That’s something.

Suppose they’re all wrong. (Told you so!) But they’re not all wrong.

And finally, yes finally, suppose (if you dare) what it’ll feel like then

to know how they (meaning we) knew now that, even as their (our) last chance to   

prevent

it (i.e. catastrophe) is juuuust about gone,

they (we) are too busy to do more than wait for someone to hurry up already and find a

fucking solution,

entertaining them(our)selves meanwhile with enough post-apocalyptic bullshit (but isn’t

some of it pretty cool?) to obscure how they (we) will surely deserve the curses of

every coming generation,

which will not, however, reverberate all that long

because of, you know, oblivion.

James McKee enjoys failing in his dogged attempts to keep pace with the unrelenting cultural onslaught of late-imperial Gotham. After college he held a number of ludicrously unsuitable jobs before spending over a decade as a teacher and administrator at a small special-needs high school. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Acumen, The Raintown Review, Saranac Review, The South Carolina Review, THINK, The Midwest Quarterly, Xavier Review, and elsewhere.