It never went away I was only a kid I

Remember years of tooth-ache after it

Mutated the winters were the worst and when the

NHS went there was panic, riots

Bodies in the streets,

Dad went for food but

Never came back like

Half-naked animals we were,

Screams hung in the smoke, bells tolling

Weeping politicians and

Hoarders got strung up on the news, mobs burned the

Palace the royals

Disappeared after the

Power cuts came

No electricity at all when taps ran dry women

Sold themselves for a bottle of water

Computers nothing but scrap no one

Knew what was going on or how to get cash when

There was nothing to buy you

Lost track of time, all we had to

Chew on was rumours they talked of

Cannibals just before

Martial law we sought the woods past

Looters bodies stinking

Tanks and dust choppers with loudspeakers

Chinese and American troops fought then

Dropped too it happened so fast

Mass graves left

Half-dug, wild boar chewing corpses

Queues of bold buzzards pecking, thin

Kids with fat bellies gnawing grass that sickly

Sweet smell

Houses dismantled for timber to burn

Endless fires in the night

How many folk remain?

Not many, there's nothing in the cities now but

Scattered bones and skulls like  the

Motorways overgrown roaming animals and gangsters

Cholera must have killed millions forests grew where

Fields used to be thats where we

Hid, my brother and me till a few years ago

Mushrooms killed him

I dont need a dentist any more you

Kept to yourself or died, I

Shot rabbits with bow and arrow strangers too wore

Skins drank from streams I'm starving since the

Rabbits got sick only today I saw the

Red rash the tiger has my scent they

Love the forest they wont starve I'm too

Weak to climb a tree even sharpen my

Knife unless the sores put him off it'll be

Fangs