Waiting  Specter

Long hast I waited

Lonely in the cold shadows of windswept time

Lingering patiently, ever watchful

of the gray twilight

where sunsets of empires

give bloody and painful birth to rising history

Always has it been me

Reaching forth from my treasured darkness

to inflict cruel destiny

on kings wicked enough to partake in her horrors

For such are the beasts

who have scribed your most terrible pages of history

It was I

Four thousand years past

who fouled the minds of ancient pharaohs

Enticing them from their sanity

with golden deceptions of their own godhood

And I who made stony the heart of Ramses the Fool

driving his arrogance to defy the God of his slaves

until lost in the madness I inspired

did he stand lonely and weak by the sea

mocked from afar by his lost slaves

while between them on the cold waters of defeat

floated the corpses of his dead army

My echoed whispers

in Nero’s cruel mind

put torches to great Rome

and within the amphitheatres  bloodied walls

drove deep the fangs of savage beasts

into prayerful Christian throats

as in centuries not yet dawned

would I drive barbarian fangs

deep into the corrupt throats of wailing Romans

To serve my entertainment

have I cast forth across sleeping Asia

the hungry shadow of the Mongol Hordes

I’ve raised high and threw low

the great kingdoms of Europe

And for the enticing scent of an empire in flames

for the pleasing sounds

of a mothers lamentations over her child’s body

shall I forever continue to torment thy race

And so I bid thee

of that great western empire to bear caution

For as Rome fell….

as the barbarians aged…

and as the Mongols withered

so hast thine own time now come

And as I have corrupted and made evil

the hearts of all the great rulers

so have I now done so with your own

But as thy power and arrogance

be ever greater than all empires before thee

so shall the ensuing apocalypse be equally great

For though many curse thy name

so do they live under thy protection

As they revile thy merchants

so do they enrich themselves by your commerce

And as they condemn thy greed

so do their starving masses accept thy charity

And so shall it be

that crumbling into the dust of thy great empire

shall follow all civilizations

which have made dependence on you

which have been built on thy charity

and have lived in your protection

And thus shall my long wait be ended

For with thy fall shall I revel for the next thousand years

in the greatest and the darkest of all ages