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There was something in the light...
Don’t let it touch you! Stick to the shade!
But even that offered no relief.
It fell on a summer’s day, hiding in
Solar rays, riding the bright beams
In unseen monstrous waves,
Surfing radiance with the glee of marauders;
The clandestine brazenness of spies,
Moles, assassins, dark operatives.
Cloaked by invisibility, transparent as
Molecules of corrupt unscrupulous
Air.
And they didn’t stand a chance,
Those beach mobs and picnickers,
The glib weekend throngs of fun-seekers.
How could they know that layers
Of sunscreen and hats
Would do nothing
Against an enemy incursion?
The beady soldier “ants” of an alien army
Too small to glimpse as the foreign
Beasts landed en-masse, in covert brutal
Droves masked by a sunny day;
A stealth invasion force from beyond,
Out there in the black unknown,
The starkness of Space.
But they felt its contact, like
A third-degree sunburn,
As sharp needle-teeth with the tiniest tips
Imaginable sank into flesh.
Bones were stripped of
Their meat in a brief span.
No chance to flee.
Only the ones indoors, sheltered by vehicles,
Outlasted the first sunfall.
They kept coming — in epidemic vesselless
Fleets — a vast multitude
As uncountable as the stars!
Despite warnings, staticky panicked
Radio and television transmissions that were
Blocked, cut off to blatant silence,
The world was swiftly overrun
By unfair advantage, a surprise attack.
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Refugees not immediately devoured,
Heeding the messages, draped themselves
Head to toe, but clothing
Proved no defense. Tiny feet crawled
Under and within.
There would be no survivors,
The globe’s life erased
As if by locusts, and a thriving mass of
Hungry immortal drifters moved on
In search of life...
Intelligent or ignorant,
Brown or white, blue, gray or green,
Bare, clad in fur or feathers,
It all tasted the same.
The consuming struggles and woes
Of Humanity were reduced to
Bloodstains. In time
These would fade, with the land’s
Memory. Bereft. Barren desert and rock
Defined and defaced by pavement,
Graveyards of burly metal beasts,
Metropolis towers.
Every liquid drop thoroughly drained,
For the feast of tissue led to
Thirst.
Sunlight rained a golden storm,
The atmosphere gone, clouds of vapor
Obliterated. Imbibed
On a greedy vicious descent to
Fertile soil.
Now there was nothing
In the light or the shadows.
In the grayness between,
Or the once-thriving
bustling and brimming dust
Of a dead planet.
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