What's It Gonna Matter After

WHAT'S IT GONNA MATTER AFTER? What's it gonna matter When… a child looks to the heavens and asks what a star is... when… water mammals lie beached… bodies acid-emblazoned lumps on bleached sands... when… burnt-leaved fields stare back at tired farmers who seeded them... when… pop-eyed children plea for the mercy of a death too slow in coming... when… the last humans burrow molelike beneath the earth's sun-bleached surface escaping death rays jettisoned from the fire-ball their ancestors once worshipped as a god... when… bones now ashes lie on stretches of hot, white dirt… like little mile-markers to hell... When… the last survivor; a lone cockroach; sparks, crackles and fizzles… into a pile of ashes no wind will ever scatter... What's it gonna matter What… religion, sex or color a human is... there aren't any. What's it gonna matter What… money is, vinyl siding is what… a CD player or a VCR is... What's it gonna matter That… the market was a bull three years in a row that… polyfoam is cheaper than paper that… tuna sells better than salmon. That… the first man on the moon was an American... that… the first house on the moon was built there by the Japanese in 2025... What's it gonna matter When… there's nothing but a stretch of searing, sun-bleached dirt lying lifeless on a brown dwarf once called Planet Earth...