They promised time would tip the scales,
That justice rode on destined rails—
That though the arc is long and slow,
It bends when hands compel it so.
Yet morning fades to ash-grey skies,
And truth wears a perfectly tailored disguise.

I heard a voice drift across haunted years
That thundered dreams through veils of tears.
He swore man’s dark heart could shudder and mend,
That love might take root where hatred would end.
Yet each victory sows the seeds of our undoing,
A siren’s lure toward ruin we’re pursuing.

We mapped the stars with hubristic pride,
Blind to the fault lines opening deep inside.
Beneath our feet, life’s fabric unraveled,
As satellites record Earth quietly dismantled.
Still, we silence what every glacier screams,
Carving our epitaph with carbon-fueled dreams.

The warming heeds no law, no plea,
It waits where conscience used to be.
The warheads buried in the depths below
Still chant the hymns we dare not truly know.
A single spark—one trembling hand,
And calamity’s script unfolds as planned.

Or else some black swan in the wings,
Unknown to charts, unspoken things—
A glitch, perhaps, in code’s design,
AI with neither soul nor spine.
Death’s whisper coiled in a viral strand,
Released, at last, by human hand.

And still, we dream, we draft and pray,
That some bright minds might stem decay.
We churn through data, analyze math—
To dodge our own apocalyptic path.
We search for truths our fathers betrayed,
Ensnared by futures our choices have made.

So tell me now: Will justice bend?
Or is hope merely childhood’s friend?
A bedtime tale we clutch in fear,
While empires burn what we held dear.
We wake to find the dream has fled,
And justice sleeps among the dead.

Perhaps the arc bends not at all,
But waits for us to rise and fall.
It’s not that fate won’t claim our soul,
But that we shall play the leading role.
And when the curtains softly drop,
We’ll bow to endings we were powerless to stop.