Billionaire of Youth - with audio

audio link

Once there was a boy

So full of joy

On top of the world

He ran wild and free

A dragon was slain before breakfast

A princess would attend for tea

The world could be taken

For time needed no appointment

His sinews were supple

He was beautiful to behold

In his eyes shown the Universe

Birds spoke volumes of poetry

As they flew through the sky of his heart

Love was breath itself

No hand could arrest his soul

Remember when a blue sky revealed

What kind of beasts played there

In the churning satiny plumes -

Then rolling over in the dirt

To release a blasting steady stream

Of the scattering Dandy-lion's

Fuzzy white universe of stars

Time marched in the Foreign Legion

It's rifle salute did not dare

To trifle with the Robin's call

Nor could it blot out

The Cardinal's red coat

Each breath of air was

Sweet like Honey with

A child’s breast the comb

When yellow blooms of love

Clover and buttercups provided

Equal sensations of vibrant sun

The breeze played the strings upon his head

It caressed this neck and cheek

With a question for a slide

The boy played the seesawed game of childhood

He climbed each green apple tree

To find a pirate captain's treasure

A Robinhood, he snatched black ripened grapes

Of neighboring vines, and lustily consumed

The candied pleasures beneath their dusty coats

Then a dance sprung up from his legs

For the song of the moment

"Be off now 

To every kind of game and

To every kind of friend"

He was a billionaire of youth

A prince in foreign lands

No one spoke a word that

That he sought to understand

Playing at what is learned

Taking what was free

Damming what is earned

He looked with pride upon his empire

But the seasons played and it burned

Time wrought loss and caused the boy to leave

Upon returning the boy saw

That he and the kingdom

Were no longer the same

For everything had changed

The empire of joy was robbed, plundered, gone

So the boy turned away

To adventure in far off lands

He needed to get away further and more often

On ever increasing journeys in search of life

He lived in and through other imaginings

Traveling onward with the four elements

Of earth, water, air and fire

Floating freely high upon entertainment

The boy swam in projects,

Goals and reams of schemes

The future became the present

The past followed in dreams

But much of the now was forever lost

The empire lay destroyed and

No one yet comes to call

There are none fascinated to listen

While shadows grow ever tall

So time bespoke an age of rest

Now moonlight's entrancing dances

Cause the gray sands to glisten

Dimly recalling fortunes now spent

The glory of what was, now lies in sleep

The green estates, succulent orchards and

Dreams of castled lands have been exchanged

For a desert's expanse of rainbow scatterings

With only one thing left for inheritance

This shell of a wind-tattered dusty tent.