Hugging Catastrophe

It’s exhausting. It’s planning
Some huge event where the details
Are vortices of more wicked

Surprises, more unintended
Consequences. Anticipate
As many as you can, you’ll fail

To have prepared well for them all.
If everyone on the planet
Except a few protagonists

And their antagonists vanished
To set your story up nicely,
Nice and tidy, tightly focused,

Have you considered the details
Of what would immediately
Fall, crash, burn, explode, seize up, smash?

It wouldn’t simplify the world
To excerpt most of the people.
Life didn’t get simpler after

The plague of Justinian or
The Yellow Turban Rebellion.
Divert a river and all kinds

Of chaos emerges downstream.
You can’t chart chaos in advance.
Dystopian storytellers

Are just excusing what they crave,
A simplified social setting.
If you really meant to model

The end, not use it as pretext
For tales of a few survivors,
Prepare yourself to be worn out.

It’s exhausting. It’s gaming out
More variables than atoms
In your head, where you just wanted

To isolate some characters,
Dose them with fear and violence,
And then watch where the gossip led.