(i)

Mutations soaked the air, that night,
and drowned the world in dark;
a wave of chemical demise
that left the blackest mark.

The reaper was a scientist,
apocalypse foretold
by meddling with such fragile cloth;
the fabric of the world.

He rode a steed of good intent
upon a path of hope,
but paved inferno's flaming road;
the final misanthrope.

His name consigned to dust's lament,
his legacy is death;
existence now reformed in dirt
and Lonesome's shallow breath.


(ii)

I clawed my way from underground,
a rubble cradle's clutch.
I heaved a gulp of Poison's air
with lungs coated in smutch.

The burrows of the deepest trains
had kept me in their clasp,
as though the day had 'come a sword,
the night my hasp to grasp.

I knew I was a man, those days,
a person on the Earth,
my name forgotten out of need,
my past a blank since birth.

I wandered from life's wreckage with
a will to walk away
from history and mem'ries past;
society's dismay.


(iii)

I walked for weeks before the pang
of hunger halted me,
the air alive with nourishment;
extended destiny.

I knew my natural life had gone,
replaced with acid's fee,
but even then I didn't know
I'd walk through centuries.

Eventually, I understood;
the world was down to me,
and Atlas handed me his weight's
responsibility.

I set out to discover him;
the man who signed our writ.
The world needed a target's face
to drag it from the pit.