Death

(For Oyintarere, a dear friend, R.I.P.) In the dark, icy quarters Of earth’s depths he resides Jealously guarding his barn of harvest’d souls He is Death, the eternal terminator of lives LIVES! Lives so radiant! Pregnant with dreams! DREAMS! Dreams which ne’er on paper express’d Dreams which to any living being were ne’er spoken Cruel fate! Yet we watch helplessly As he plucks the brightest of lives In a senseless orgy of senseless rampage Oh! My pity is abundantly shared amongst those poor souls The eternal separator he is The merciful dispenser of euthanasia he is No time he wastes he in heartlessly putting suffering souls Out of their painful misery Endowed with an outstretched skeletal arm Armed with a cold, rusty bladed sickle He is the Grim Reaper The eternal ferryman of souls Ferrying merrily poor souls Across the cold boundary of existence and death, But I bear no morbid wish to be reaped or ferried E’EN WHEN MY GRAY HAIRS ARE RIPE AND READY TO FALL! For I shall stubbornly cling unto continued existence E’en till the moment the doomsday trump shall sound.