Rush headlong and hard at life <br />or just sit at home and wait. <br />All things good and all the wrong <br />will come right to you: it's fate. <br /> <br />Hear the music, dance if you can. <br />Dress in rags or wear your jewels. <br />Drink your choice, nurse your fear <br />in this old honkytonk of fools. <br /> <br />Living in the modern age, <br />death for virtue is the wage. <br />So it seems in darker hours. <br />Evil wins, kindness cowers. <br /> <br />Ruled by violence and vice <br />We all stand upon thin ice. <br />Are we brave or are we mice, <br />here upon such thin, thin ice? <br /> <br />Dare we linger, dare we skate? <br />Dare we laugh or celebrate, <br />knowing we may strain the ice? <br />Preserve the ice at any price? <br /> <br />Faraway in China, <br />the people sometimes say, <br />life is often bitter and <br />all too seldom gay. <br />Bitter as dragon tears, <br />great cascades of sorrows flood <br />down all the years, <br />drowning our tomorrows. <br /> <br />Faraway in China, <br />the people also say, <br />life is sometimes joyous <br />if all to often gray, <br />Although life is seasoned <br />with bitter dragon tears, <br />seasoning is just a spice <br />within the brew of years. <br />Bad times are only rice, <br />tears are one more flavor, <br />that gives us sustenance, <br />something we can savor. <br /> <br />Those who would banish the sin of greed <br />embrace the sin of envy as their creed. <br />Those who seek to banish envy as well, <br />only draw elaborate new maps of hell. <br /> <br />Those with passion to change the world, <br />look of themselves as saints, as pearls, <br />and by the launching of noble endeavor, <br />flee dreaded introspection forever.<br /><br />Dean Koontz<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/dragon-tears/
