The last slice of wood

He carved slowly,

With the precision of jealousy.

Hot; heated and crimson;

Anger and anguish.

It was they that gnawed,

Like they do in jealousy.

The tree of source behind him.

The exactitude matched the tool.

The gestation of a million years

To give birth, midwifed by a man,

And there it was.

The wheel.

The world had begun.

It is not a point in time

- these suspect beginnings –

To be recorded. The offspring leap

upon wheels to move.

Motion is the purpose.

Of body or mind.

But greed, not jealousy drives them.

Towards where?

The world is ending.

In such terror of discovery

Her laboured breathing echoed

Through the temple.

Amplified by the blindness

Of the building. Closed, boxed in.

The sightless hear more.

Her tiny spasms of excitement

Were heard by all corners.

She inscribed runes and symbols

On clay.

Fearful of failure – novice plotter.

And then as the candle sways

She sees it.

The alphabet.

The world had begun.

Scribbled on licences of apocalypse

Or sprayed on bricks with malice.

Certificates of demonhood are printed.

The world has ended.

And I don’t know…for I feel

Like a school swot answering

A question. “Give two examples”.

I don’t know. Where it ends.

Where it began.

I don’t know.