For Paul Brookes’ challenge, the poem is inspired by this painting, Background radiation by p a morbid.

Background radiation

It’s coming like it or not,
the age of the three-legged pigs
and two-headed sheep,
the screaming chickens
and the calves with no mouths.

We watch the images on the screen,
pick up the groceries in their bright packages,
the meat neatly slabbed,
while the sun climbs higher and higher.

Ice melts,
forests burn,
we put on sunglasses.