As a man meets his woman
On the bridge of a fleeting moment,
As love is kindled from the embers
Of a life immersed in expectations
And fanned by the winds of restless exploration
For one’s kindred spirit,
As a bond begins to form
Between the disparate and once oblique,
As the lips of a lover begin to seek the pulsating skin,
Radiating heat and moisture,
Bearing promise of a thousand passions
Concentrated into a single touch, a single solitary kiss,
As the pores of the skin tremble to the soft caress,
Sending chills across the spine,
Spreading through the heated blood,
Spreading warm and blissful pain,
As the bodies begin to pulse and writhe in ecstasy and heat,
Melting in the seeping waves of each other’s stormy desire,
As a man meets his woman
On the bridge of a fleeting moment,
A wedge is trying to cram its way between the two,
Harassing the union,
Hovering around them like a greedy rodent,
Gnawing and nibbling, shrieking, and shredding,
Jealous and greedy,
Born of dejection, bred in isolation,
Festering, dying,
A veritable Taker,
The dark and lonely soul that has been haunting
And littering the clefts of history and time,
An emotional vermin,
The scum of used up and long gone relationships
That has accumulated on the brim of harmony’s tracts,
Bitter and grey and foul as excretion,
Foul as a rapist,
A burglar,
A thief,
Taking – with force – that which can only be offered and given,
Taking – without remorse – to fulfill its fetid needs,
Its vices and greeds,
Taking, sucking vitality out, feeding off the rest,
A parasite, deadly, horrible, greedy,
Taking,
Taking,
Just taking…

The man and woman turn around
And face the taunting vermin,
Which displays its huge, glossy, yellow incisors
And hisses back at the couple,
Lunging and jabbing at them;
They turn around and face the specter of greed,
The Taker,
And lift their hands up,
Pointing their index fingers towards it;
Then they suppress their love,
Suspending it on the bridge of another fleeting moment,
And summon from the dark corners of their psyche
The ghosts and apparitions they had locked inside
During their lives’ journeys,
Dredging up every failure and every foul emotion felt,
Every bitter and toxic experience accumulated,
Every belated and piled up grudge;
They summon these atrocities up,
Inundating themselves in them,
And point their index fingers towards the Taker,
Shooting everything inside the ever greedy
And compulsive parasitic apparition;
“Take abhorrent Taker, take without reprieve,
Take our griefs and sorrows,
Take them all, they’re yours to keep,
Taker is your name and rank, and taking is your game,
So take our griefs and sorrows now,
And relish in their wake;
And may they stay with you until you learn,
Until you learn to earn what you now yearn for;
Learn to earn you filthy Taker,
You filthy horrid Taker;
Learn to earn,
To earn, not take!”

As a man meets his woman
On the bridge of a fleeting moment,
Their love begins to pulsate through them
While the Taker’s wedge has receded from sight
And disappeared altogether,
Leaving behind a smudge, a mere stain, colourless and bleak,
Yet, still a stark reminder
Of the horror inherent in feeding off others’ lives,
In gnawing at their dreams and shredding their souls,
In taking everything away from them
With force, and greed, and sullen parasitic need;

As a man meets his woman
On the bridge of a fleeting moment,
In the wake of the Taker’s demise,
They share their love with each other,
And they shine like the mighty sun
Across the bleak and frozen plains below,
Melting away the millennia-old grey
Accumulated layer of filthy, dirty, rotten snow,
Allowing the land to finally breathe.