'If I Met The First Man On Earth'

If I met the first man on earth -
not that I will, for I am one of the twenty-first century,
and we have not learnt yet how to trace back
through time -
I would ask him what his name was
 first. Who

was his creator?
Was there any at all?

Would their limbs resemble my own,
like a brother resembles
a brother or
like a thorn resembles a rose?
At least I would know
if the bible were true to its word
and if everything I'd ever known and
believed in was a lie.

Questions would bloom on his lips,
decaying in their curiosity
and leaving the sour taste on his tongue: what
are we to become? Will my
actions determine that? Will I
live long enough to see your
generation or will I die,
to be buried by my children's hands,
with whose own death I will be
forever forgotten?
And if

I told him what his sons, daughters,
descendents were to
become and what they
will do and what they
could do, would he weep
with guilt or
would he scream, petrified? For
the earth is on his shoulders
and how could bone, flesh,
held by all but each other, stand
and live beneath such weight?
Why don't

you end it, right
now, I might ask him. Save
the world from the
putrid greed that grows in so many
it reaches the clouds. Clouds
that reach mountains we have
reached. Reached so high we
salivate for the possibility of flying
in the black vacuum of space pricked
with dim stars, over and over and
over again. We will suck our
home dry, until it becomes a glassy,
limp prize, like an insects body, wingless
in the lonely night. Why not save
all those souls, fiery in kilts and glittered
armour, blind with glory - yet deformed with
violence? Why not save those lovers and wives,
estranged and lost as knives without sheaths, their
cheeks streaked with tears over pearl and brown flesh over
bones that creak, with age for the old and
for the young, that they cannot speak with the grief? Why
not save those tortured spirits in the ocean, to become
slabs of meat on the cold wooden deck
of a ship, that will travel to retrieve
slaves in shackles that draw blood, blood
that will be swept up nonchalantly? Why
not save those butchered animals, betrayed
by their masters as lambs to the slaughter? Why
not save those punctured hearts? Why not
save

Me?