Destroyed in an Hour

Destroyed in an Hour

(“All these riches have been destroyed in one hour!” Revelation 18:17a)

You thought you would stand forever, didn’t you.
All the reports showed your finances were strong,
your ledger was balanced on the best side of your fortune.
The birds stopped mocking you, the dogs lapped at your feet,
the acolytes lined up by the hour to praise your silvery age
like it was the highest building, like its final floor reached
above heaven.

You spent your spare time circling the globe, you were
given trinkets made of gold. You imagined lines and lines of
supplicants waiting for you to speak the magic words that
would turn their lives around. They knew you were the poverty
breaker
and wanted to be captured by your unnatural mission. They
were certain there was a secret equation that would turn the
water to wine, their tears to diamonds, and their disappointments
to opalescent stained-glass windows that let the golden rays
fall across the paltry collections of misguidance they
had invested their time to believe.

You survived the earthquakes; you held on when the markets
tanked.
You laughed at the storm that leveled everything within
miles of your epicenter. You were untouchable. You were
slippery and had closed every deal with your fingers crossed
behind your back. If someone failed when you pulled the rug
out from under them,
you told them they had simply picked the wrong place to stand.

But there were pests you did not see, insects that lived between
the cash and the plastic you stored behind the walls of
infamous portraits. The agreements you forced you forgers to
sign soon ran out of time. They payoffs you slipped into the
hands of the survivors weren’t enough to keep them from finally
speaking the earth-shattering truth.

Your money stayed intact. In fact, your accounts became bloated,
but too many people now, fooled for so long, began to prophecy the
crash of the one who the world had called beyond and completely
blessed. You crashed as your ego shattered; your scruples were the
first to go.

When your deals shriveled, you swiveled and found
no one was left on the opposite side of your lavish mahogany
desk. Your conscience was seared and you blamed it all,
the meteoric rise and the asteroidal downfall, on
lies a flunky or two had started and could not be stopped.

Briefly you rebounded. But within the hour everything
you built for your name and leisure was over. You could
admit it if you wanted. You could heal from the haunted
cobwebs that left your mind, so deceived and diseased,
that you stood on the first floor and opened the door while
weeping that your reach had receded like a dirge from a person
that no one knew.