Gluttons and Jackals

Twilight rolls in like a wave
breaking on a foggy shore.
You and I,
watch seaweed and driftwood floating by.
The veil is torn from the sky.
The world turns upside-down.
We perch precariously like seabirds on
time’s obscure littoral.
We are Janus-faced,
simultaneously observing the future and the past.
Our sandcastle is breached,
barbarians sack the city, history ends,
its defenders defeated by Odyssean duplicity,
a plague of lies ubiquitously spread
by the lord of the flies.
No one now is wise.
Amid the smoldering ruins
of shattered civilizations
gluttons gorge on sugary cakes,
that others have baked.
Jackals snatch meat
from the dying lion’s mouth.
Gluttons and jackals feast today,
but what of tomorrow,
when all that sustained them
has withered away?