Not While You Have Got An Ounce Of Breath Poem by Mark Heathcote

The devil waits with barbed hooks and chains cast aside.
He grows tired of each failed attempt at suicide.
He grows weary of his countless defeats.
But still, he entices calls from you with endless deceit.

So, don't be complacent. He'll never forget you.
He's just been a hairbreadth away from you.
The sand in the time glass you can never again accrue.
Even now, when you sense it? There is light all around you.
He's touching distances with talons inbound.

Wake up! Don't sleepwalk, or else you might drown.
Wake up! He's been there, don't you know
Wake up! He's been there, don't you know
Since they picked up your heartbeat on that ultrasound,
And he isn't playing around.

His breath is heady hot sulphur, ah, and alas,
Sadly, his eyes are an unsympathetic black, oily glass.
That leaves you, Maudlin, wishing for an early death.
But like a fly-in, you won't submit.
Not while you have an ounce of breath.

And a vault full of money, anyway, someone tells me
What's his hurry? Doesn't he know I'm a love child?
Doesn't he know I'm cut from the cloth of his fold and creed?
I was found swaddled in a blanket in the snow, needing a feed.
Next to a bottle of gin and a cut flower, no one could name them.
And since I could talk, I've accepted my share of the blame.

So I'll never be forgotten, and he'll never forget me.
He's been a hairbreadth away from me since I was a seed.