Servitude without Reward

A traveler, alone, dressed in black,

Filled with hope,

Enthusiasm, dark and frightful.

Traveler holds out his hand,

Hot as an ice pick,

Dark as a fire,

Powerful as a child’s touch.

He stares ahead

Willingly. Stubbornly.

Hesitating…

He ascends up a slope, but down.

Down a path to fill his destiny,

Emptying, Emptying

Of everything he once held dear.

As Traveler reaches the summit, he halts

Even as he rushes, faster and faster and faster

The joy

of this crimson act,

Will surely free his reckless soul.

His eyes grow dim as a new spring morning

As he proclaims the words to doom the world.

As he speaks the screams and horror of the scene

Fill his ears as a symphony fills a room.

Joyously.

And then he is gone, along with all the others,

Dead, Judged, Hell-bound.

And calm as an ancient crusade,

And content as an angry parent,

The maker sits alone on his chair

Glad to be rid of the pest

He had so long ago, created.