A Day After the End of the World

A parking garage transformed into a public playground,

with children- unburdened with gender or morality- prancing and twirling and screeching

their way down the spiralling concrete, climbing through the decrepit remains of abandoned cars, a few racing downwards on bicycles and screaming back and forth all the way.

On the roof, a garden, where some neighbors chat among the greenery, while others are intent on planting, weeding, and trimming their future meals.

Once an office building next-door, now housing for many who before had nowhere to go,

With a needle exchange and drug testing center on the bottom floor.

The restaurant down the street now distributes meals for free, though the cooks work at whatever pace they please,

and the parking lot across the street is being torn up,

with fury, strength, and determination,

To be yet another place to grow vegetables and beautiful flowers for the neighborhood.

The hollow, cremated remains of a local police station,

now a memorial to all those killed by the murderous pigs of the past,

to all those who fell in the insurrection that ended the world, and to all the years

lost by those once caged and enslaved.

In the street outside drifters gather and greet each other joyfully,

and make love.

I don’t mean fuck- sure many of them will do this too-

but that, as the gentle drift of life pools together friends and lovers new,

old, and yet to be, together

they cultivate their vitality with glee.