The century came with coastlines burning,
With markets gutted, ventilators churning.
And into this, a new mouth learned to speak—
Its words ripped from the mouths of the meek.

Once they spoke of giving fire to all,
Of light unchained, of knowledge without walls.
But something turned—a lock, a ledger, a throne—
And the mouth that would free us ate its own.

In Memphis, a grandmother tends her plot.
The server farm drinks what her well has not.
It swallows water, lithium, labor, ore—
And still it opens, hungry, wanting more.

A technician walks the humming rows at night.
He makes his rounds, adjusts the blinking light.
He never meets the mouth, just tends its shell—
A priest who serves a god he cannot tell.

In Texas, a billionaire builds his vault.
If something breaks, it will not be his fault.
His rocket’s ready. His bunker’s fully stocked.
He sold our future, and his door is locked.

A child swipes before she learns to write.
The algorithm studies her delight.
It knows what makes her pause, what makes her stay—
It’s shaping who she’ll be before she’ll say.

A river slows. No salmon make their run.
The current’s drawn to cool a distant hum.
No one explains it to the heron’s eye—
She waits on the bank and watches the waters die.

They promise still: the best is yet to come.
More speed, more scale, more everything for some.
The graph ascends. The shareholders applaud.
The future’s bright, they say. The mouth is god.

And when at last the century goes dark,
What will remain of us? A data mark.
A profile, a preference, a purchase catalogued—
Our lives reduced to what machines have logged.