Rhymes

Si(y)ntax

 

My name is Greed and I’m the impish pygmy ennobled by society as a thoroughbred steed,

I pollute and proselytize with zeal regardless of color, caste and creed,

Criticism of me is but lip service when my detractors are the ones who plant the seed,

I’m the imposter that lets corruption, apathy, selfishness and inequity breed;

 

My name is Lust and I’m the oxidizing agent that corrodes your moral compass until it goes bust,

I turn back the clock of evolution and turn some of you into savages full of depravation,

Age is no bar for me and darkness is never far from me,

I know no boundaries and and melt all reason in my foundries;

 

My name is Pride and I’m the perfidious seductress who convinces you that you are the most virile, charming, powerful and wise,

I reveal my hideous face from underneath your hide regardless of your choice in presentation of side,

I make you so high on your strengths that you forget that the ‘unsinkable’ Titanic sank and the ‘invincible’ Achilles was humbled,

I’m your thickest friend around when you are strutting your feathers and attracting enemies but I abandon your vessel the moment it has run aground;

 

I’m Wrath and I’m the fury that hell hath, when man walks the self-annihilation path,

I make you hate, dish out bile on a plate, berate, insinuate, decapitate, exterminate and devastate,

You lose your senses, look at the world through smoldering lenses, leave in your wake a pile of broken fences,

I drive you blind making kindness impossible to find, leave nothing at all to rewind;

 

My name is Gluttony and I’m the reticulate python that swallowed an elephant with neither punctuation nor compunction,

I make you feast when your family fasts, you keep going until the morsel last as the emaciated faces watch helpless and aghast,

I make you lay claim to dinner as soon as it comes off the stove, care less for the little ones that have hunger pangs pounding them by the drove,

I make you want it all, I make you want it now, you could be alone in the midst of a king’s banquet and still run short of chow;

 

My name is Sloth and I’m the mountebank that makes you feel you are ascending the Everest when you are really climbing up a short flight of stairs and that too with bushels of rest,

I create the illusion that time is in abeyance and standing still, I put the shackles on your will, the grain never separates from the chaff in my rice mill,

I make you averse to labor, you are always asking for a favor, your dictionary lacks the word endeavor,

I make you inert and murder all ambition, you are as useful to the society as the appendix is to bodily function;

 

My name is Envy and I’m the wife, the car, the home and the talent you don’t deserve but when your fellow human being possesses it you resent it and do so without reason and reserve,

I’m the tub of vitriol that you wanted to push your friend/neighbor/colleague into but ended up tripping into yourself,

I’m the fire that singes your soul a little bit every single day because you lit me inside your heart and you keep adding fuel in every which way,

I’m the diligent rat that gnaws at the fabric of your happiness, I’m the industrious woodpecker that chips away at the stilts of the peace of your mind, I’m the insidious termite that eats away at the foundation of your self-worth until the edifice of your existence is reduced to a pile of rubble.

All of us are tenants in your temple, its your choice yet not so plain and not at all simple!

“Most dangerous is that temptation that goad us on to sin in loving virtue” 

~ William Shakespeare