What the meteor foretold

Massive solar storm heading for Earth

The Guardian, 7 March 2012

Three days ago did three wise men

evangelizing from the pulpit of their renown

diversely divine what lay behind

the sight of the sky above England’s darkness

ripped by a foundry-white

and fire-spitting meteorite.

The first wise man was keen above all

to dispel all doubts of a second coming.

To an accompanying choir of altar boys

and backed by a posse of celibate priests,

all asserting that God wouldn’t be so lame

as to use the same ploy twice, his holiness laid

the blame for what was surely the end of days

on the sinful bonding of loving gays.

But didn’t the Lord already do that,

the skeptic retorts, to Sodom?

The second spoke more levelly and was brief.

Shooting stars, he said, always come to grief.

Remember Bill Haley, remember his Comets?

One fly-by and whoosh he was gone.

This one again augers nothing, the brilliance

of my smile shall continue to light the airwaves.

The third looked out from his ivory tower

and beheld the sundered sky.

Then he looked down, on the ground below

was assembled a host of reporters.

He greeted the Guardian, threw out the Mail,

gave a long, troubled stare at the Mirror,

finally spotting with literal tumult New Scientist

standing alone. Why are you here? the guru asked.

Because Brian Cox cannot be found.

But have you not searched the sky?

That is where he resides.

Now the wise men are silent, their prophesies

undone. Albion mounts an around the clock

watch for a rock, not for a messiah.

Strange lights in the northern sky illuminate

nothing. The moral compass points East,

the arrow of time thinks it’s

a boomerang. GPS too is off-kilter, I see cars

driving backwards down rutted tracks,

the drones of war have strafed with friendly fire,

a West Coast train arrived in Carlisle

before it left Euston. The lights have dimmed

so my toilet won’t flush. A satellite streamed

pay-to-view porn freely into

the hyperlinked minds of babes.

So now we know, that burning light

in the sky, it wasn’t a meteorite,

but a distress flare lost to the night.

(c) Slush Poet