Man. (alone). We are the fools of Time and Terror: Days
Steal on us, and steal from us; yet we live,
Loathing our life, and dreading still to die.
In all the days of this detested yoke — This vital weight upon the struggling heart,
Which sinks with sorrow, or beats quick with pain,
Or joy that ends in agony or faintness — 170
In all the days of past and future — for
In life there is no present — we can number
How few — how less than few — wherein the soul
Forbears to pant for death, and yet draws back
As from a stream in winter, though the chill
Be but a moment’s.

For we die every day; oblivion thrives
Not on dry thighbones but on blood-ripe lives,
And our best yesterdays are now foul piles
Of crumpled names, phone numbers and foxed files.

Do you wrestle with dreams?
Do you contend with shadows?
Do you move in a kind of sleep?
Time has slipped away.
Your life is stolen.
You tarried with trifles,
Victim of your folly.

Life is the farce we are all forced to endure.

Ah! the terror and the delight of that moment when first we fear
ourselves! Until then we have not lived.

Time passes and pisses on us all.

We are all so guilty at the way we have allowed the world around us to become more ugly and tasteless every year that we surrender to terror and steep ourselves in it.

Today's today. Tomorrow, we may be
Ourselves gone down the drain of eternity.

Death starves us of life. So we learn to fabricate our own immortalities.

And in a mad trance
Strike with our spirit's knife
Invulnerable nothings
We decay
Like corpses in a charnel
Fear & Grief
Convulse is & consume us
Day by day
And cold hopes swarm
Like worms within
Our living clay

Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death.

Time! On whose arbitrary wing
The varying hours must flag or fly,
Whose tardy winter, fleeting spring,
But drag or drive us on to die

Procrastination is the thief of time: Year after year it steals, till all are fled, And to the mercies of a moment leaves The vast concerns of an eternal scene

Fatigue makes cowards of us all.