Pandora’s box was opened. 
Stripped down scapegoats 
sacrificed to slurred chants 
and filled out football stadiums 
as the cinematic promises 
of the future once projected 
decades ago proved as false 
as the next promised paradise.

Release the hounds, 
the drones and all the nukes!

Paradise was finally found 
………….burnt down,
lost along with truth and 
everything else as the price 
of life got cheaper by the day.

Wormholes were stumbled 
upon whilst looking for 
another planet to gatecrash 
as we tampered with time – 
The East became interested 
in dinosaur skin suits and 
The West got a taste for 
deep fried dinosaur pieces   
and we found out the reason 
dinosaurs became extinct 
had been us all along.
Meanwhile Henry VIII 
became an inflated reality star: 
“Kiss, Marry or Kill?” 
and European settlers sailed 
to the new world to 
make America great again.

Messages came from designer 
nuclear bunkers to tent cities 
that this was what freedom 
looked like. 

In circles,
some dared to whisper
that it was the beginning 
of the end, 
but it wasn’t. 
It was simply the end 
of the beginning. 

Gwil James Thomas is a novelist, poet and inept musician originally from Bristol, England. He is a Best of The Net nominee whose work can be found widely in print and also online. His fourth poetry chapbook titled Writing Beer, Drinking Poetry will be published soon by Concrete Meat Press.