Two Minutes to Midnight

There is no button Big or small Just a single card Inserted by a single hand into a single slot (Like taking cash from an ATM) But hurling 900 missiles delivering Armageddon, Consuming like tinder The loved and unloved, The hated, the ignored, Powerful and powerless, Faithful and faithless, Innocent and guilty; An unbiased, indiscriminate, democratic holocaust.

Who holds humanity in his pocket? Carter sent it out with the laundry, Clinton lost it for months, It lay in Reagan’s blood On a Washington street.

As he looked into the eye of history Obama in Hiroshima, Exposed it to the ashes of 160,000 lives.

Trump caresses it in his little fingers, Flashing Rocket Man As if it were his American Express.

They call it the biscuit, The famous card. An evil host, Transmogrified death.

Our planet hosts 15,000 warheads. It takes just 100 To kill 2 billion people.

Where are these messengers Of mass annihilation? Ours lurk about the planet And our backyards: in Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado.

They are Beneath the seas, On aircrafts in Missouri, Belgium, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Turkey.

Our president holds the card, Holds the biscuit, in his pocket. He can whip it out And detonate the earth.

He is but one. In a world gone mad The Doomsday Clock Ticks closer In 2010, six minutes In 2012, five minutes, In 2015, three minutes, In 2017, two and a half In 2018, two minutes to midnight.

Between the desire. And the spasm. Between the potency. And the existence. Between the essence. And the descent. Falls the Shadow.

This is how the world ends… Not with a whimper but a bang.