Prising With A Splinter

I am Death
in a city of euphoria.
I am cunning
and yet my guile
could never create utopia,
for our generation drowned
when our fathers were born.

I will take you
begging on bandaged knees.
Mercy has no place here,
my heart is the shade on graves.
These eyes are dew
on the grass above stone lullabies.

My fingers reach out
like wilted flowers on cemetery gates,
waiting to hang your soul
on my aged bone.

I can be either
envy or greed,
or the blood stain on a rusted knife.
A noose dangles from my sunlit fangs
making victims swing
whenever I inhale.

Beware!
Death has lost its romance,
lost its patience
lost its mind.
Where will you go when I arrive?
And will it be to paradise?
Or to the twisted tantrums
beneath the sea?

Rest in peace,
but rest is already in pieces
so fold your hands and thank your fathers,
for the circus that awaits
was created by their chaos...

@Steven Francis poems 2001