In shadowed halls where silence chills the air,
I stand alone—the final voice of reason;
Before cold seats, abandoned, mute, and bare,
The ghost of truth betrayed by human treason.

I mount the boards where greater minds have stood,
With scrolls of proof and diagrams precise;
I speak of rot beneath the polished wood,
Of creeping flame and innocence sacrificed.

My voice rings clear through rafters and balconies,
Through galleries dressed in dust and tarnished gold;
I warn of fire, flood, and slow disease,
But only echoes mock what’s long foretold.

The clock ticks on, a tyrant in disguise,
It hoards the hours we squander in our haste;
Potential burns like stars in midnight skies,
Yet systems strangle it—dreams condemned to waste.

I show them trends, the cost of broken chains,
The mathematics mapping our decline,
The melting caps, the droughts, the parched remains,
Yet every seat remains a voiceless shrine.

Our laws, those iron webs woven with care,
Protect the few, yet bind the many’s plight;
They promise justice—noble, bright, and fair—
Yet crush the seeds of change beneath their might.

Outside, the world parades its garish charade,
The barkers crying fortunes to the skies;
The crowds that spurn the truths I have displayed
To chase the painted miracles of lies.

They crowd the rooms where hucksters mislead, cheat,
Where smoke and mirrors veil the abyss approaching,
They pay with their lives for comfort’s honeyed deceit,
While I stand still, my dark omen encroaching.

The engine drones on toward oblivion’s pyre,
They measure worth by cold mechanical charts,
Each wheel spins us far from life’s lost choir,
Their souls betrayed by withered, hollow hearts.

And when the blaze at last consumes the stage,
Survivors may return—bewildered, rueing.
They’ll sift the ashes, searching for a sage,
Finding only my warnings carved upon the grave of our undoing.