The Emperor In His War Room
i. THE EMPERORStanding in the space that holds the silent lace of nightaway from youYou think that you can hold the searing, moulten gold betweenyour fingers ...But it slips through, tearing tendons as it goes,exposing the white of a knuckle ...flesh-and-metal forming letters in the mould.Cradling you gun, after choosing the ones you think should die-Lying on the hill ... crawling over the windowsill into yourliving-roomThey stare out, glass-eyed aimless heads,bodies torn by vultures ..you are the man whose hands are rank with the smell of death.Saviour of the Fallen, Protector of the Weak,Friend of the Tall Ones, Keeper of the Peace ...Ah, but it is the only way you know .....Looking out to sea, a flattened plane of weeds which bear no livingYou crush life in your fist as your heart is kissed by the lipsof deathGhosts betray you, ghosts betray you, in the night they steal your eyefrom its socket ...and the ball hangs fallen on your cheek.Complaining tongues are stilled; a thousand mouths are filledwith rusting metal.Your face a shade of green; somehow you try to speak through all thegarbage in your mouthBut it won't come out, and you cannot frame the wordsas your stepsonthrows your fame into the flames and you are burned.Saviour of the Fallen, Protector of the Weak,Friend of the Tall Ones, Keeper of the Peace.Ah, but it is the only way you know ..........ii. THE ROOMLive by sword and you shall die so,All your power shall come to nought,every life you take is part of your own,death, not power, is what you've bought.Cringing in your room as the outriders of doom stepon your threshold;Begging for your life as the impartial knife sinks in yourscreaming flesh ...without malice, merely taking murder's toll,you must pay the price of hate, and that price isyour soul ....Live in peace or die forever in your war-room