Walled Garden
A Lake Within the Earth
There’s a fountain there
It never rains and it never fills
Sometimes children come to fill their pockets
With coins
Not old enough to know how hope turns to weeds
Or how many fortunes have been lost
In the name of fortune
Empty their minds
They wait in silence
The pitted concrete basin
Cloven and overgrown
Plays host to outcast dreamers
Of futures lost
In shackles clamoring for
One grasp at solitude
They share these broken dreams and
Dead promises
Force-fed a constant stream of misplaced hopes and burned-out aspirations
Transformed into the grist for the mill
Of the bloated, of the gluttons
Of their wretched, contorted, conniving deceit
Leeched dry of their souls to prolong the feast
For they must feed
One solitary cry
A million kingdoms die
Strike them down
Light them up
Make them suffer
Penance
Strike them down
Light them up
Make them bleed
Strike them down
Light them up
Make them suffer
Make them bleed
Fire in the garden
Terror in the halls
They cower behind
Their gilded walls
Burn down their houses
Drag them screaming into the streets
Pour their blood into the fountain
Drench the coins in their defeat
The pitted concrete basin
Remains so empty still
The death mage reign is endless
Dreams unfulfilled
In shackles clamoring for
Anything but self-deceit
Any attempts are hopeless
The worms sustain their greed