The Historian

a fairy tale told upside down.
a printed smile on paper.
a sky that's filled with ash and smog
but in the dark, it's safer.
tiny feet run through the street
through crowds of smoke and humid heat.
newspapers flutter by, unseen:
a familiar language now forgotten.

clanks and crackles fill the air.
an Iron/Fire Age regression.
two million years to raise the stair
of civilization and progression
and not once did any of us look up
in hopes of maybe glimpsing what
lay waiting for us at the top.
building blindly in one direction.

but London Bridge has fallen down
and rained upon the cities.
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
but there's no one to take pity.
the people scream and the people run
but the wheels keep turning on and on
as we look back at the re-rising sun
and wonder what we were building.

but even as the pieces crash,
the armies rise anew:
the first step laid down in the ash
toward a sky no longer blue.
we rebuild, forever up
and praise our genius and our luck.
and the man in the paper smiles on,
as if to say, "I told you."