Inheritors or Pests?

When the last bird has cried aloud

and has taken his final breath

i will finally join the crowd

and will anticipate my death.

When my final breath is taken

i will have joined the dinosaurs,

admit i was mistaken

in seeing the end of wars.

After life on earth is extinct

will bed bugs be the final link?

Or, will the cockroaches prevail

and will there still be some e-mail?

I expect junk mail will survive

when receivers are not alive.

Walt Abbott–12-28-2009

the barbarians are coming

who are these barbarians

who may dare to doubt

what our religions are about?

the illiterate majority

who are coming into power

will destroy us within the hour

our libraries will all be burned

destroying all we have learned

while our leaders are unconcerned

our poets and philosophers are afraid

that none of this can be remade

and our civilization will fade

if our religions are barbaric too

and do what religions always do

they’ll burn all our books but a few

perhaps the barbarians will know

how to make traditions grow

and how to make sewers flow

perhaps a new democracy

will have a different philosophy

but how will all this affect me?

Walt Abbott–12-28-2009

eternity provides an answer

for wishing our lives to last

may our life be as good

as now, and as in the past