The Mercenary Lantern

This is the ancient, primeval war.

This is the conflict of daytime and nighttime, darkness and light.

Morning salvo launched as sunrise strikes the night

The field of battle bathed in the day's blaze.

The struggle resumed as dusk seizes the sun,

dragging it down under quicksand ink.

Enlisted into perpetual strife,

bound to battle as a manufactured mercenary.

The lantern dozes in the dazzle of daylight where

only splinter cells of shadows can hide and plot

the twilight's rise, the day's demise.

As dusk darkens, your sanguine, saffron comfort awakens

beckoning all with your lemon-light beacon.

Drowning your deadly disguise,

your fatal filament electrifies

a lumen lance into a charge,

and the soft sludge of evening is pierced through.

This street corner alight in a golden glow of victory.

The lantern binds the blackness, claiming the small battlefield

awaiting the return of the sovereign sol.

Darkness left to circle and hiss, held in the periphery

around the lantern's poisonous phosphorescence.

Waiting for the moments before dawn

when the sun is still hidden and the lantern's power is cut

tar-black pitch swarms and the lantern lies slain.

The killing shade's tepid triumph.

Creeping vengeance as the sun pushes back the amber lid

from its glowing horizon coffin, rising to raze the midnight prince.

The sun king regains the timeless throne

The assassin lantern sleeps.

Waiting to lift its electric lance of light

and charge again into the primordial fight.