Youth is Hollow

Youth is empty and hollow, yet sees itself as full,
Drifting as dandelion seeds without direction,
Callow in its form, it flies into the storm,
And seeks its sanctuary in sublime disasters,
Casting away its days as dust in the wind,
The sterile scatter of squandered seconds,
As minute by minute it surrenders itself.
So many dead seeds sown upon salted soils,
In the season of our follies, the spring of innocence,
Sleeps in daily waking dreams, slowly fading,
Into the red rut of night, furrowed by reason,
Where the ashes of the sun fade and die,
In the embers of the West’s dark grave,
The years of yesterday will forever remain,
As regrets, forever unspoken but forever present.
For the folly of youth is the infinite future,
That stretches before us unbroken by time,
Immortal we lived, eternal we seemed,
Our lithe limbs gilded with groaning pleasures,
Sought the sweet ripe fruits of sensation,
Our tender tongues teased the scarlet berries,
That budded upon the pale boughs of bliss,
In the secret gardens of our temptations.
Lean as a panther upon the hunt, I ran,
When the hunger was everything, pale flesh,
Was the prize of my endless pursuit, insatiable,
Flashed the fires of my desires, forever burning,
Writhing as serpents in my awakening soul.
As false systems stalked us in the shadows,
Whispering to wild flowers to shed their petals,
And reveal their beauty to beasts with fake smiles,
That plucked them as their prize possessions,
I saw the sacred gardens become silent graveyards,
Where we laid our lives upon altars of deception,
Until youth fled, its beauty broken and ravaged,
For the price of wisdom is the wasted past,
And hate for the hollows that time has left behind.