After the Strike
---------------
The drill was
Stop, drop and roll. *
If they're not going to
spare her future,
rattling Kingpins,
where to be when it hits?
In a bowling alley?
Stop, drop and roll,
if you're on fire.
Bowl until you expire.
There's ham sandwiches.
(Paddock pigs are cooked and bloated).
Sausage rolls, pies,
but the electric's down,
power plant direct hit ,
no one to fix it now.
No more power games,
arcade games are dark.
Ration chocolate bars,
cola , water bottles.
Two sets of toilets,
when the diarrhoea hits.
Change shoes.
Soft jelly cakes when the mouths ulcer
and every internal tube
can't bear scratchy crisps.
Stop, bowl, roll.
Barricade the doors!
people
skin hanging
paperbark treetrunks , **
rifle branches,
dying in gutters.
No spare doctors.
... hurts, mummy.
Mummy I'm tired,
get up mummy.
Mummy?
Stop, drop and roll.
Tom, go get the ball
Stop, drop.
Get up Tom
Get up on your pins
Tom!! Get up.
Get up....
No audible pin drop.
* Advice given to the public in Australia, especially schoolchildren , on what to do if caught on fire. Also how to bowl, sort of.
** common Australian tree that has bark peeling off in large swathes all the time. The outside of the bark is tough, but the inside layers are soft and white like tissue. Some aboriginals used it for bandages.
(Copyright Runningonempty.)
