Poetry-Thing Thursday: To Endure

In the streets the dead walk.
Around them, survivors scamper and scour.
Rats.
There are no dreams;
save death coming on swift wings,
rather than a long un-life.

Those alive wish they weren’t.
Wish they’d perished when it all set in–
or during the unrestful aftermath.
Now, somehow, they carry on.
Survival is more instinct than intention.

Rotting corpses shamble through shadows.
Their bowels drag. Leave trails.
Rot. Filth. Decay.
Groans fill darkness.

Gnarled and mottled feet,
tramp across a ruined civilization.
That which nature,
with her indifferent persistence,
intends to reclaim–
through her devouring,
swallowing more and more each day.
Forever.

But even through the despair,
the stink of hope is palpable.
but the dead find sustenance with it.
Seek those weakest to it.
Even still it remains;
a spark of life, infinity.

For among the mottled flesh,
the rotted bone,
there is an ever-present ticking clock.
An invisible pen,
which scrawls in time,
the tales of one species’ dwindling existence,
and of another’s wounded limping–
for even total war may be lost,
to attrition of a sterile species.

And to that,
it is said,
if there is one thing,
Humanity is known for,
it is its undeniable ability,
to endure.