A History Of (The End Of) Our World

It did not happen
overnight.
It started forever ago
with fire

and advanced
with every technological answer
to the question, “Why am I not
God?”

Electricity, light bulbs,
fans, refrigerators,
stoves, irons, telegraphs,
telephones.  Barbed wire.

Steamships
and ironclads.
Repeating rifles and revolvers
and Gatling guns.

Rails
across the country,
the Golden Spike,
the end of suicide pioneering.

With every change, we changed.
It started with fire,
and after that we changed,
kept changing, kept it going.

The first car
needed a driver.
The first television
needed a watcher.

How well we have raised it, this ending,
how thoroughly we have celebrated it
and spread it around.
How determined we’ve been

to keep it safe
behind barbed wire,
our guns at the ready.
How confused we are

that it has gotten away from us.