Poem #28: Timeless

Costly time,

how you love my troubled mind.

I hand my riches to you

time after time.

Glistening jewels and gold bricks,

velvety furs and polished metal.

Even my silver blades

I turn over to your soft hands

and my rough ones wind together

with nothing to hold.

Still, you lick your plump lips,

demanding more day by day.

I have nothing,

nothing more to give you

and your snapping jaws.

Devilish eyes stare out from

your sunken face.

You’re so very old, and yet eternal.

You grow crooked and mean

on your throne of dreams.

Your crown sweats with exertion,

dripping into your eyes, blurring your vision.

I lay wasted on the ground at your feet,

but you cannot stop taking and taking.

I sink, bereft of colour and

paling more still with each waning breath.

Now you take my life instead of my riches

and it does not take long

until I am little more than a husk

and then not even that.

But you, cursed and blessed,

will remain in the world of the living

long after I am gone.

It will take you little effort

to find a new tenant and

still another after that.

Do you grow bored of your constant craving?

Do you grow tired of watching us fade and die?

In a hundred years, in a thousand,

in a hundred thousand years,

will you still reside here on your throne,

stealing lives to better your own?

What a miserable existence you lead.

Lonely, costly time,

will ever you find peace?