I wear the heavy crown
that drills into my temples,
with teeth of cast iron
gnawing at my skull.

I grip the sceptre
with fingers gangrenous
and mottled with decay.
Can these rotting digits
sustain the weight?

I signed for power
with ink squeezed
from prisoners’ eyes,
now watch how signatures
burrow through my skin
like maggots in carrion.

I craved altitude,
and hungered for the view
on top of this glass mountain,
but failed to see how oxygen
is needed to sustain
the human breath.

The horsehair stretches,
thins to a spider’s filament
with each decree I issue,
each word a small death
falling from my tongue
like putrid carrion scent.

The banquet hall stretches,
a slaughterhouse of opulence
where untouched plates glisten
with oils that reflect
my face in fragments,
and the wine bleeds
like an opened vein.

My reflection fractures
across these gazing surfaces,
a king with melting features,
a tyrant wearing his mask,
a corpse refusing to smell
its wrenching stench.

Which aberration
speaks truth tonight?
I whisper to myself
beneath canopies sewn
from human skin.

Why did you want
this kingdom of vultures?
What did you think glory
would taste like?

My hands both wield and cower
before the blade’s hungry kiss.
My ears both command silence
and bleed with whispered
conspiracies.

My eyes scan horizons
yet burrow inward,
hungry for darkness:
the paradox of isolation,
surrounded, yet hollowed out.

I swallow fame like mercury,
silvery, poisonous, corrosive,
the kind that preserves
everything soft but not alive.
How perverse to cage myself
in gold that bruises,
to drown in admiration,
shallow as a mirror’s depth,
to sign death warrants
with fingers that will someday
be grotesque trophies.

I am both the butcher
and the meat hanging
on its hook.
The sword of Damocles dangles,
catches light that sears
my retinas.

Do they see me dissolving
in my robes?
Do they watch the horsehair
unravelling fibre by crimson fibre?
Do they understand this crown
is both my glory and my coffin,
too heavy to remove
without taking my head with it?

I wanted this palace
built from wishbones.
Didn’t I?
I asked for this throne
of intimate disappointments.
Didn’t I?
I sacrificed pink, living parts
for these marble monuments
and continue feeding myself
to the machine.
The sword,
the crown,
the fear,
all mine,
all me.

I am now the king of beautiful, seeping wounds,
and the emperor of exquisite suffering?

26/4/2025