www.reverbnation.com/brendanhickey/songs
“LUCIFERS” 27/7/23
Just three lucifers
in a silver Victorian vesta case
and their secret strategical use
became the mundane basis
for recent cataclysmic events.
The sense that the apocalypse
must be nuclearly induced
has been recently eclipsed,
on channels breaking news,
by island resorts being reduced
to blackened distorted rocks
and shaky panic camera clips
of fleeing families flocking
to not so safe bases
to end up being beached there.
Over twenty long years
the elite student exchangers
became no longer strangers
stoking red-under-the- bed fears
but respected rule keepers
posing no security dangers.
These Rip van Winkle sleepers
now awaken with stern faces
and to orders adhere
to become forest creepers.
There they’ll find the driest places;
the climate-changed tinderbox spaces
where their ultimate mission is clear.