Desire offered me a Joyful Blindness
new each time from the Caldron

such that I succumbed
moved thereby
to cheat Death himself
accepting thereby the double
conundrum
that a too intense Desire

can kill the Dream it inspires

and  sometimes too, kill the Dreamer

condemning him or her perhaps
to surfing the tides of blowback

the Damocles Pillars of Blame and Time,   

seeing Fate toss dice

with his life

in the back room

where secrets hold

sway

and lie down

with Soothing Regret

who utters

“It’s not your fault.”

Where pressures are

presented;

where I get to  

 wed my Desire

 where I get to

go away

into Indeterminate Time

and come back

wondering where I have been

and guilty bred I

punish those ugly Muses

which time and time again

take me right back

to square one

where next time I do it all over again;
Desire’s Slave or Consort
undetermined;
yet I am

lashed to the mast

of that runaway ship

adrift with the tides

destination unknown, uncertainty

until the Final One

which is easily foreseen

in that foreboding

where the Reaper laughs

saying
“In the end all come to me

some crying, some denying

some defiant

some bitter draught-drinkers

of their erstwhile lives

but all succumb

to my dark web at end;
yet in this
none I resent more

than types like you,” he said

“who come plumped up smiling

sated from Life’s Desires.

 irritating me the more than the others

because those like you enjoyed their lives

despite my entreaties

that they should not.

Nay, they wed their desires
fulfilled them
willingly paying the price
in Despairs coin
because you see my friend

the Dreamers

cheat me
Death

even after they are dead.

A secret well known

but seldom recognized;
if you kill the dream,

you, too, have killed the dreamer

and their death my friend
is final;

but in those like you
those with the capacity for rampaging Desire
preceding the dream

cheat me Death
and you are my mortal enemy.

Better you humans not understand

that the secret is
better to over-sip

Desire

than not to desire at all

than not

to Dream at all.

The Desireless

are the ones I crave
because they come to me already dead.
I like the one’s who have spent

their lives self-denied

because they become
for me my dead and docile
and are easily plied

 into my Marching Lines
of the Well-Disciplined
and the
truly
Dead Now and Gone.
The Dreamers
alas,
I’ve learned
cheat me Death

because their Dream lives on
and on.