With each idle minute I live, I fear,

for the passionate flames of inspiration

gently nick away at my feet.

The waves of deceivingly blissful complacency

silently threatening to subdue

the dreams I have spent a decade

feebly cobbling together

in silent introspection…

 

The clock solemnly ticks away,

marking each second wasted,

marking each idle minute,

marking each unproductive hour,

pushing me closer and closer to

an end that I know is so

agonizingly near...

Yet so

tantalisingly far…

 

All the things I longed to do,

to see,

to feel,

to sense.

A love lost,

A loss unloved

A dream deferred.

All the agonizing misery

lost to the endless bounds of time,

that I will never have the miserable agony of living through…

 

I feel as though each idle minute,

each moment of this life

that I did not spend savoring-

loving living the life I live-

has brought me closer to this solemn realization;

that at the ripe age of 17 I have peered into the cold lifeless eyes

of death, who, atop his mountainous fortress of solitude, peered back into

my soul, bearing back into me everything that

I ever was, am or will be...

 

But as I continue to stare, basking in the silent suffering of the truth,

I come to recognize these cold lifeless eyes

not as those of death, but as those of an all too familiar foe,

one that seeks

nothing more

and nothing less than to make

a fool of the dreamers and seekers,

to demolish and consume those who dared to imagine that

there, somewhere  beyond the bounds of the boundless,

beyond the endless arc of time and space,

there might just lie a

future that,

while just beyond the reach of the mind,

is just within the reach of the heart…

 

...regret…

 

regret seeks you,

regret consumes you,

regret destroys you, merciless

and cruel, bringing a fate worst than death.

regret is undefeatable, indefatigable, unyielding

in the face of that most ambrosial influence on mankind’s mind…

 

...hope…

 

No.

I will not bow.

I will not submit.

I will not to cave in to

this unforgivably unforgiving

predator who seeks to destroy

the dreams I have spent a decade

feebly cobbling together in silent introspection…