Unfashionable Apocalypse – Aniket Sanyal

December 26, 2021

***

“Fashion Week”

 

Open necked shirts
Black boots

We knew enough
We knew business

The world was maybe ending

So began the era
State sponsored hedonism
Experimentations of mind and body

“Let’s get down to economics.”
“Goddamn war…
…bled us bone-dry.”

They call me governor
Or commandant
They call me fucking president
Let’s make a corpse out of you
I want to fuck
The shop window
The proprietor is being vicious…unreasonable

I once took on ten men
10 lovers
Such forgetful skin

We all want more than life
Could ever offer

“We were left with bruises, dirty blood.”
“You’re a lying fuck.”
“May the lord be unkind to your unborn daughters.”
“You’re a lying fuck.”

Once upon a time
Panic set in
Heavy, groovy
Upon the general population
The nation-state

So I farted and shat
In the commandant’s face

She smeared
Fecal waste all over her face

And we call it
Chronic exile ‘round these parts

The real two-bit blues.

***

 

“Sky Shrieked Awake”

 

Speak to me
Of the new mind

Even when I do not attempt a scent
Of the senses of senseless sense

This documentation remains “difficult”
The daily plague count exceeds the thousands
New dead bodies, cut down early or late by disease

I know not, of my one true mind
I find it difficult to bring my thoughts to bear
I assume I know everything
Even in the slack-jawed conviction of knowing nothing

Everything feels far too ordinary
The beginning will soon swallow the end, whole
What am I to do
With all my minor repressions, this timid madness
Is it madness that keeps us
Burning brightly, into the fast-dying night

What can I do for the masses
How can I save myself first

Did God abandon us after all
Is this all indicative of the uselessness of thought and and speech

What keeps the body fat and fed
What keeps the mind from turning to thoughts of sulfur and rot

Somehow, I assume the end is not near
Imagine, that this is only the beginning

I am so full of rage
Some pain, a bit of tricky fear
I am full of something, some weird trick, of the light and the night

The world does not work as it once worked before
The world did not ever have a means of working before
Cosmic visions and strange vibrations will not save our souls from present conditions

I am hurting and you are hurting and He is hurrying onward to death
This is a difficult time, for those most affected by God’s godly wrath
The world is a green dragon full of angry, flame-burnt breath
The world is coming to an end
Whole economies are crashing underfoot

There He goes, and crawls and bawls, underneath my feet
My feet as big as the ass of the earth

Oh, all of it was terribly difficult
One must become one with one
There is a light within all
There is a tiny faint hint of a trait, within all, much like the blood of the world
Everything ending all at once

Do we have it so easy
My situation feels so comfortable and full of love and laughter
I am frightened, to step outside the door of my home
These are difficult times for the mind the body the soul of the world

O great god merciful god
Save us from the pettiness within our shivering sweating skins
Help us to elevate ourselves beyond ordinary madness

Such is the will of the way
Such is something, anything, that exists before nothing

We may speak of the resilience of the human spirit
I must learn to ignore unwanted vibrations

I must become much like the wind
Whatever came before
Will exist after