Overgrown 

This is a departure from my usual please enjoy this speculative poem.

Dust to dust 

Our bones are rust 

Great cities are falling into decay 

Moral and physical 

The bridges are bleeding from their iron skeletons 

The buildings are being overtaken by mold, moss, and plant life of all kinds 

The animals are returning 

The bridges are crumbling 

The buildings are caving in as the trees reach for the sky 

The dandelions are popping up through the asphalt and concrete 

The concrete is returning to gravel 

While the deer frolic through asphalt trails bordered by trees and bushes 

While the decaying traffic lights now overgrown with ivy and vines  

Cannot hope to mitigate the rush of the animals as they go to the watering hole 

African lions roam American soil feasting on white tailed deer 

The natural order that once seemed lost seems to have wiped us all out dust to dust our bones will rust 

While the forests regrow 

Over our bones sprouting forth from 10 floor apartment buildings 

Both weakening and strengthening the structure at the same time 

Breaking through the concrete and racing up the wires 

Our bones will be their scaffolding to reach new heights 

We disappeared not through some great big bang 

But slowly tearfully with great defiance we slowly succumbed to our own wickedness 

Data centers replaced playgrounds and fields 

Ever rising power and water consumption 

Spelled the beginning of our ends 

As we came to rely on AI to answer all our questions to give us reasoning for all our actions 

We crumbled slowly and inexorably leaving only our bones behind 

Crumbling infrastructure and buildings became the hatchery and playgrounds of a new world order 

For a return to the nature, we so despised or so it seemed 

For despite our attempts to rule it this world does not bend to our whims 

It is beyond our power to fully tame it 

So when the time came for the earth to tire of us  

We had given all our reasoning over to LLMs 

And were unprepared to combat it and so we succumbed to an end of our own making 

Now all that’s left is the crumbling rusting bones of our civilization as a garden world grows over our ruins, and remains