FEAR THE REAPER (a Renge)

A renge style poem about the grim reaper.

Late one moonless night
Comes a figure draped in black,
Stealing human lives.

Taking away the life force
Of his victim; now a corpse.

Silently he creeps
Through dark and dingy alleys,
Scything all he finds.

Taking only the seared soul
Leaving the human vessel.

Scything human prey
Like corn scythed in the summer:
Death personified.

Creeping slowly through the dark
Of a victim’s sleeping room.

Slowly raising death
In the form of a honed blade,
To a sleeping child.

Aiming toward a pale neck
Cleaving him or her in twain.

Right across the Earth
Human prey keep on falling,
As he steals their souls.

No human life is sacred
To this loathsome, creeping fiend.

Another life falls
To the midnight reaper’s blade,
As he cuts the flock.

Culling all humanity
Without fear or prejudice.

No one knows he’s real
They think him but a legend,
Yet he walks in truth.

Reaping all and sundry
Slinking through this awful town.

THE END
© Copyright 2012
Philip Roberts, Melbourne, Australia