The Mad King Unbound

His smug or furious face is everywhere

He dreams of ruins, cloying smoke

Bones thrown on a fire

War is coming–he wants it, he wants,

Inside the wants, the maw

Of his emptiness, infinite, dark

The destroyer in him wants to break

Everything, his small hands with

Their prissy gestures, the bully

With his hand on his cocked hip

We know him from every schoolyard

In the world, one who has to make

Others suffer to feel his win, without which

He is nothing but the lust of vengefulness

His coiffure askew from the great wind

Of his ignorance, inside his head

Vast plains, air thick with the sound

Of cicadas, his will to harm like some

Malign deity with a thousand arms, admired

By those he pays to reflect back to him

His massive and fragile self-regard, he is

The dark thing we dreamed into existence

The chaos of his words and deeds

Written by his own hand on every public

Wall, his signature like a prison fence.

 

 

Last Mission

Of our last mission we recall
No details–where we were, what we did,
Our goal obscure, our resolve dissolved,
And all horizon disappeared.
Whatever we of late slogged through, we
Have arrived to find the republic
On the cusp of ruin, the emperor
Spewing lies and nonsense, his coiffure
Askew in the great wind of his
Ignorance, urged on by advisors
Eager to corrupt the state and to
Impair the common good for gain.