Caveat Emptor
You need saving, I think, you need saving –
I don’t know from what, but you need it, and I got it.
I choose to lease myself as investment in your craving,
(Though nothing gets refunded, as your credit-rating’s rotted.)
You think I look expensive, and you think you can’t afford it –
When your faith is unsecured, and your int’rest rate obsessed.
With all emotions overdrawn, your hope is due an audit –
Now you’re out of guarantee and about to be possessed.
Expensive ? Me ? Most surely yes,
And very very dear –
I will cost you ev’ry single thing, and nothing less –
I will cost you all you know, and all that you express –
Your ev’ry laugh and ev’ry scream,
Your ev’ry try and ev’ry guess,
And I will cost your ev’ry lie, and ev’ry truth sincere.
Your ev’ry insecurity and neurologic mess –
They all belong to me, you hear ?
Mine is your perdition, absolution and confess,
Mine the power to repress,
Mine the power to redeem.
I shall be your angel engineer,
To grease your thread and mesh your gear,
And shine your rusting soul with my caress.
You need saving, I think, you need saving –
God knows as from what – you don’t know it, but you’ll get it.
I choose to bond myself upon the markets that you’re braving,
Expose my soul to risk until we’re equally indebted.
You think I look expensive as I gilt your fraying edges,
But you’ll enter into contract on my exponential sureties.
My platinum promissory shall underwrite your pledges
As you finally take stock of all your life-assured securities.
Dizzying ? Me ? Forever yes,
And very very sheer –
I shall cost you ev’ry single thing that you possess
I shall cost your ev’ry hope, and watch them coalesce.
Your presentide is mine to gleam
Your morrowment is mine to bless
And though I know this terrifies, I’ll help you persevere.
For mine shall be your ev’ry waking thought and sleeping dream,
Mine your ev’ry failing scheme,
Mine your ev’ry sweet success.
Guilt and joy and lust and fear –
They cost far more than money mere,
And these are how you pay for me – by bushel, peck and ream.
And then, what is more, I press
My darling with an added stress –
For not just shall you suffer this to give your love supreme.
But see, you must attend my tear –
For like you, I too revere –
So now you must accept the very same from my extreme.
Give my passions safe address,
For we are quartz, my love, and we are steam.
I intended this to be a metaporical contract near the start of a relationship where one side is saying that they will monopolise all of the other’s attension, but when shown to friends they saw it differently – one thought that it was some pretty hardball divorse negotiations, while another saw the narrator was money itself. Hey, if these work for you, have at it.
Rhyming Couplets 