The sweet shop at the end of the world
Has been spared the looting and most of the rest
The money’s in the till, the shelves mostly stand
But the sweets and the jars are not at their best

Cola bottles and cubes were melted solid
A kaleidoscope glaze, now stains the glass
Some sweets broiled, some others burnt,
Some were obliterated in the Bonbons’ blast

Shrapnel shattered the gum drop jar’s top
And cockroaches crawled in and fed; 
Their sweet-sweetened shells were fertile ground
And spores spread and fed on the dead

Time and decay made it verdant
And shoots shot through the shop for a spell
Then time and decay killed the knot weed
Killed everything except for the smell 

But these are all common enough relics 
That we glimpse through the part of the window most clear
And not what I wanted to show you 
Just the setting for what I want you to hear: 

For another jar sits in the sweet shop 
In a sort of shrine close to the door
It’s filled with scraps of scrawled paper
All poems of times long before

Pick one and read it and picture the poet
Who presented with the apocalypse
Has written an unlyrical list of sweets: 
Candy shrimps, sugar mice, licorice, double dips. 

Another poem, the same: Black Jacks and Toffos.
Another: sees through Roses tinted specs
Another: a paean to the sweet shop itself  
But not a word how the poets became ‘ex’

They must have talked of extinction
They must have been aware it was close 
They must have rallied against the world’s evils
Before the pre apocalypse was post 

The survivors - that’s what they were then -
Even before the end, could only look back
And lived in a haze of sweet nostalgia
While their present and futures turned black

Another jar sits in the sweet shop 
By the door in a sort of shrine
Filled with scrawled scraps of paper
And among them is this one of mine.