Death Spiral

They first came to blows in the Ice Age's snows

Over the carcass of a woolly mammoth

With spears in their hands they clashed for their clans

Both were wounded and one died on the spot

The other languished a few weeks more with his kin

Both were reborn in the midst of a storm

A great flood which covered the land 

The mothers clutched them as they ran for the hills

Every tribe scrambled for the high ground

The waters rose higher til all were drowned

Their next lives began on the banks of the Nile

One as a pharaoh and the other a slave

One ruled from a palace while the other was jealous

Of the easy life fate had deprived him

He got his revenge with a chisel and malice

Three thousand years later came the last of the tomb raiders

They explored the great pyramid of Giza

In the dark depths within, they found a coffin

An ornate sarcophagus vandalized, they surmised

By an angry slave who scratched in his own name

Across the centuries, the two fought and suffered

On battlefields, in bar fights, sieges, and duels

Some way or another, they were drawn to each other

Like magnets or moths to a flame or the pull of the tide

Cruel destiny for them for eons on end 

An epoch later the earth had a new crater 

The end of humanity was near in the last winter

At last the two foes in the planet's death throes

Huddled together to share the warmth of a fire

They both died of course and felt some remorse

For their long and pointless feud