Mr. Apocalypse

Mr. Apocalypse is coming tonight, for it’s time to feed the earth again and after, shoot the spirits to their celestial abode.

The end of the world arrived trillions of years ago. But few noticed it.

I’ve got a sign on my front door, DO NOT ENTER. I’M AWAY ON A LONG VACATION, WILL RETURN IN 50 YEARS.

Mr. Apocalypse knows the truth. He knows everything. But I’ve got a few tricks left for his amusement and appeasement.

He arrived on Earth when the first human died. Now, he comes day and night throughout eternity, a chimerical container for Homo sapiens.

“But when will the end of the world come in one apocalyptic moment for all humans?” you ask, frustrated with my tale of Mr. Apocalypse.

“I don’t know,” I whisper to the masses. “But my storm’s coming. It’s a Shakespearian tempest. At night, I hear it. An old man hears such things, even sick children too.”

Mr. Apocalypse is the tempest. But tonight he’s a trumpet too, a nocturne blasting my universe wide open, although I strongly protest, raging against my fate.

I may pass through a mysterious hole at any time now, even tomorrow, or in 50 years.

On the other side, in the Country at the End of the World, I imagine Mr. Apocalypse will be waiting for me and wearing a wicked grin, as he orients me to my non-existence in the afterlife. .

Of course, I don’t really know, do I? But that’s the grand mystery of death and its metaphysical beauty

 

Photography © Allison Goldin

Photography © Allison Goldin

 

Dr. Mel Waldman is a psychologist, poet, and writer whose stories have appeared in numerous magazines including Hardboiled Detective, Espionage, the Saint, Pulp Metal Magazine and Audience. His poems have been widely published in magazines and books including Skive Magazine, Poetry Pacific, Poetica, The Jewish Press, The Jerusalem Post, Hotmetal Press, Ascent Aspirations, and Namaste Fiji: The International Anthology of Poetry. A past winner of the literary Gradiva Award in Psychoanalysis, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in literature and is the author of 11 books.

Allison Goldin is an artist living in Cambridge. Her work is a collection of spontaneous drawings from the imagination. The most common link throughout her art are the semi-recognizable creatures scattered amongst and bringing together the surrounding doodles. She is currently studying Illustration at The School of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.