Engravings

I forged their hearts from liquid memory,
Engraving into them the secrets of their despair;
Secrets only them and I knew;
Secrets, now, only I can tell you;
Lessons of the dead.
Living stories make one feel youthful;
Dead stories make one feel knowledgeable,
But living the death of stories makes one feel -- ancient.
I feel ancient, like how soldiers feel
Remembering their fallen comrades;
You feel ancient when you wonder
How fragile life is, and yet
You are still here.
I feel ancient, these stories like old attic books
Stacked on an old attic bed in a dead man's house,
And when they buried his house along with him,
So did they his books.
They will bury my sickly books, too --
Written without message, without theme,
By authors without style or purpose --
If I refuse to lower the trap door.
They cannot die, lest they were never written,
Their lessons never learned, without value.
I am a thief who has stolen their meaning,
Learning from them what they could not;
You must take what I have taken and own it!
You have no excuse now!
Speak with them if with no one else,
And if you gain nothing from it,
Then you are either self sufficient
Or hopeless.