The Reflection (Original Poetry)

Words running down the page

Like white rats fleeing a cage

The rats scurry quick out of the lab

Yet they cannot evade the trial jab

The words have no time to waste

They rush along with such haste

Yet they fade into oblivion

No more seen than obsidian

They cannot combat the entropy

The world has no more empathy

There is no shortage of shortages

Burnt to the ground, all the cottages

There are more people on the streets

Than shampoo bottles in the ivy suites

Scavenging the scraps for every meal

Hamsters no longer running on the wheel

The world still keeps on spinning

But the people are no longer grinning

Still the writers tap away at their desks

Paying no mind to the world grotesque

They write of the world ablaze

Closeted in their ‘good old days’

There couldn’t be worse timing

But the poets still keep rhyming

When they shut it off at night,

They pretend it’ll be alright

They think that it’s only in the mirror

But they cannot seem to see it clearer

The world they see on the other side of the glass

Slowly but surely creeping up behind the canvas

The reflection will soon match the original

Would it then not make them a criminal

To watch what is coming and still persist

With their ideals and get lost in the mist

Of all that was and the glory days of the past

And the imagined wonders that are yet to pass

To know of the impending doom and still focus

On tapping merrily away, armed with a thesaurus

They have no scarcity of rhyming words

That will outlive the warbling bluebirds

They will last until the world burns down

To a charred remainder of the meltdown

The author zones back in to her present

Laughs at the imagined predicament

Sets her hair in the mirror and turns to leave

Pauses for a second, what had she perceived?

There, in the corner of her eyesight, that ripple

The imagined world was now here, on the triple

If only she had told the world before, she pondered

Oh, but her draft was not yet done, it was unconquered

If only she had worked faster, but would it have mattered?

Would the blood of her species no longer be splattered?

She shook her head and went on her way,

Blissfully ignorant in the light of the day.