(2:30 am, 1/24/25)
Ok, we may not win this one.
But when it all is said and done
And History is read by none,
Like when the Earth rejoins the Sun
And God himself, though just pretend,
Will close the tale of earthly End,
And His great non-existent look
Will gaze upon the parted book
Where it all turned bad and led to Doom
—A day that may be coming soon:
That chapter, paragraph, and line,
Those clear-cut marks of human time,
That sentence where the trap snapped shut
And hope went out of every gut;
When, alien-observed from Mars,
by betting robots counting cars
And carbon molecules and guns
And prison cells and wars begun
to help make sure a contract’s won,
And Fires raging in the West
And ICE storms choking human chests;
Yes, when imaginary gamblers
Dealing with their cosmic handlers
Proclaim our Earthling fate is sealed,
With not one move left to reveal,
And pay up all their botcoin bets
Across the table—check mate set!—
Yes, when the gig of Earth is up,
the die is cast, the deal is done,
the Moon fried orange by the Sun
And all our chances gone at last…
Upon that page that billions wrote
The long and winding human quote,
The log of struggle, the story of might,
and how our golden day turned night,
And how this deep blue speck went black
Because we could not find a path
To shake the bosses off our backs,
until it all… collapsed:
In that compound human chapter
Tracing every single factor,
In that sentence, yours alone—
Yes, YOU there in your human home—
burning up your private flame—
its precious heat and light—YOUR name:
Where will it be in that lost song?
Your voice be heard before the gong?
Yes, in the book that none will read,
On scrolls torched white by galactic greed,
Where will your name be in that book?
What was the deed, the chance you took?
Or didn’t take, or didn’t bother
And let them take
your neighbor’s father?
When all of humankind went gone:
Earthling, which side were you on?
