The Jealous Hypocrite

Consider thus the Jealous Hypocrite
Who wishes to monopolize my time,
Yet when she finds it so convenient,
Discardeth me as trash or dirt or slime.
She calls me forth on many routine night,
To watch with her—to heed her every call—
And though the show and time is slightly trite,
To answer her I always drop it all. 
And though it's she who's always asking me,
She says that she does sacrifice for sure
And though I oft do make a meal for her,
They fall as naught to all from her I see. 
And when she's gone I sit alone and cry;
Yet when I'm gone, I'm heartless and should die. 

Psalm of a Tortured Soul

Each moment is but an intangible gadfly:
It’s born, it lives, it dies,
As the next rises from the ashes of its carapace,
Blazes with the heat of life,
And then falls.
One after another
In quick succession,
The assembly line of time rolls on. 

By some involuntary instinct,
We pick up the ashy shell of each moment,
Dust it off,
And place it neatly next to the last
On a shelf in our mind.
Sometimes this is a crematorium, or morgue,
That smells like lost opportunities
And times gone by;
At times it is a museum,
Where we pin each moment by the wings
In proud display;
At the same time, it is an asylum or a prison,
To which we, as judge and jury,
Sentence these,
The lifeless husks of moments, to life
In prison,
In part, as punishment,
And, in part, so we can watch them
From behind barred windows
And locked doors.
But in no way is it a dusty warehouse,
A labyrinth of long-forgotten ways and shelves
Housing long-forgotten items.

For we are compelled,
By some force within ourselves,
To review and revisit and relive
These moments that have come and gone.
When we lie awake at night,
And try to close our eyes,
They haunt us like the burning ghosts of fireworks
Branded on our eyelids.

And, as these moments flash repeatedly before our eyes,
Blinding us,
We reach out, and with the pain of grasping embers,
We mold them
From nagging, buzzing, regretful gadflies
Into dragonflies, regal and majestic,
And into butterflies with wings of fire,
On which are painted proud eyes
Unmarred by shadows of regret within their depths.
But, even as the shadows of these imagined moments glow,
The husks of husks begin to crumble,
Falling through our grasping hands,
And leaving behind nothing
But the unchanging shell of that hated gadfly.
 
And again we reach out with insatiable anguish
To mold and shape reality with possibility,
Even though there is a nagging knowledge
That it is too late,
And with the effort of pushing up a hill
A boulder dragging with the weight
Of unwanted memories,
And delicately balancing it at the top,
We, for just a fraction of a second,
Repaint ourselves perfection,
Only to have it come crashing down,
Reminding us of the futility of the exercise
Just as we begin to push again.
 
Yet, despite the hopelessness
Of our inability to change
The past,
We can draw hope
From our torturous revisions,
For they can become reality,
As, in each instance, a new moment
Is born, and lives, and dies,
Followed by another,
And another.

Chapter 1: Before it was Drained Away—Part 3

Yet, just when they had nearly given up hope, they came to expect a son, and nothing could have made them happier.  The whole kingdom, in fact, was overjoyed, for the people desired a prince from their beloved king and queen almost as much as the two did themselves.  Celebrations were planned and festivities were arranged in anticipation of that much-awaited day. 

When that day came, however, all did not go as anticipated: Queen Florryn died in childbirth, and their new son, Arttur, did not survive either. 

The people were crushed.  Their beloved queen was dead.  They had no prince.  But the king, he was beyond devastated. 

The king's closest friends tried to comfort him, and, in doing so, they showed him that they cared for him, but, at the same time, they failed to make things better.  Any thought of the queen brought him great anguish, and any attempts to console him brought only thoughts of the queen. 

But, he would not forget her—he would not forget her.  As time passed, many of his closest friends and advisors counselled him to seek love once again and to remarry.  This however was a hollow and obligatory sort of advisement, for his friends knew it would not be heeded, and wondered if it even would help at all if were, for King Decoltur always vowed he would never love another as he had loved Queen Florryn. 

As the years passed, and the king's friends and advisors began to age and die, the aging king himself realized that his own end was nigh, and yet the kingdom had not an heir, nor any ready means of providing one.  King Decoltur knew that, were he to die without an heir, the kingdom would descend into chaos.  The people wouldn't know who to look to for leadership or guidance, and those enemy forces the king had worked so hard to keep at bay would seize the opportunity to overrun the kingdom. 

The king, already saddened by loss and wearied by living, in an overwhelming spirit of duty decided therefore that he would not die—that he could not die. So he didn't. 

The king continued on because he knew his kingdom needed him.  He had spent his life working to protect and defend and build up his kingdom and his people.  Queen Florryn had done the same.  He could not afford, no matter how much he wished to lie down to a peaceful final rest, to allow the fruits of that work to crumble.  So he didn't. 

One by one all those he knew fell and died.  Before long, he was completely alone and friendless.  It was not long thereafter that the faces and the voices of those he had once known faded from his memory, and, when he could no longer remember the soothing songs of his queen, the nightmares began to return.

Living and waking the king was pained and wracked with the torture of an aging body, a broken mind, a lonely soul and a lovesick heart.  From his pain he dreamed and wished to die himself, and such dreams of the respite of death only accentuated his pain.  Yet he could not die, for his kingdom—all he had ever worked for, and all he owed his people—could not be allowed to fall.

As decades passed the king eventually forgot who he was, or who he had once been.  His weariness and nightmares had blinded and corrupted his soul: he began to grow bitter—to resent the kingdom and the duties that kept him tethered to this world when he would rather leave it behind. 

The passion of the love he had once felt for his people having been replaced with vengeful bitterness, King Decoltur ultimately proceeded to tear down all he had built up.  Of course, he was hardly the man who had built them up in the first place anymore.  He prohibited music.  He banned dancing.  It was forbidden to speak the name of the queen.  The peasants were worked fourteen hours a day, seven days a week to provide for the kingdom, and to pay for their inconvenient protection and their unwilling king.  Taxes were high and burdens were heavy.  The king's guard was many and harsh.  The peasants began to wonder if this king was truly the same their grandparents had spoken of with such awe and respect so long ago.

In fact, many began to wonder if it would have been better to have been taken over and conquered by ruthless invaders than to be crushed under the weight of a bitter king who refused to die. 

The king, however, continued to rule, and continued to hate his kingdom for needing the protection of his cold, iron first and his cold, iron will. 

So, no, the kingdom of Penmar is not a happy place at all these days.

And that violin now only plays either an occasional haunting, lilting melody of loneliness or the harsh screech of anger mixed with despair. 

Once this was a happy place, but certainly no longer. 

Elusive Butterflies

It seems that we for catching butterflies
Do lie as still and quiet as we can and wait--
To wait for those small gentle creatures
To land upon our lengthened hand.

In fact, it seems the more their wings
Do catch the fancy of our eye--
The brighter their color as they fly--
The more we think we still must be. 

So, when upon the one come we
that be most beautiful of all,
We find that we, instinctively,
Do lie as still as possible:

We freeze; don't breathe;
And slightly then avert the eye;
And with outstretchéd arm
Await in hope the butterfly.

Yet if in stillness we do stand,
But be not thus a flower more,
What chance the more do then we have
At last to so achieve our goal?

Conversely though, how could we
Ever expect the grace
Of our lovely butterfly
Were we to sudden give it chase?

Mask of Volition

Walk around like it's Halloween
With a mask 'tween you and me:
You could never tell
How I ever felt—
It's not that you would never look,
It's just I'd never let you see
The person who was really me. 

Chapter 1: Before it was Drained Away—Part 2

Not many years after King Decoltur assumed the throne, his peaceful and hardworking kingdom was attacked by the hordes of a powerful enemy.  The king devoted his every waking hour, as well as most of those he spent sleeping, to ensuring the ultimate safety of his kingdom.  He gathered his knights and rallied his people, and led his armies against their ravenous foe. 

Before the war, the people loved the king, but upon seeing his bravery and courage in his fight to defend the kingdom, they loved him more than ever.  King Decoltur did not hesitate to stand at the front of his army and wade into the middle of the battle, for he could not bear to command his soldiers to do that which he himself would not do.  He saw his people cheer in victory, and he saw them fall around him.  He shouted words of encouragement and hope to them, and he cradled their heads in his hands as they died.  But every soldier—and every citizen—was willing to lay down his life to defend the king and the kingdom, for each knew that the king would do the same for him. 

Queen Florryn continued  to accompany King Decoltur to whatever place he went, riding and camping with the war caravan until the very end of the war.  She cared for the wounded and comforted the disheartened.  Most appreciated of all, she sang to the soldiers at night and raised their spirits. 

Most unnoticed and unrealized by all but one, yet most importantly of all, when the war-wearied king returned each night to his tent to rest, sighing the heavy sigh one only may sigh when he has led men into battle and to their deaths—when the king, upon closing his eyes, saw visions of his men falling by the sword, then did she sing to him.  Each night they together fought a private battle against the nightmares in his head, and were it not for her soothing lullabies, he long before would have shattered and become a broken man. 

King Decoltur's love for his soldiers, and the anguish he felt when they fell, led him to become not only a fearless leader but a brilliant tactician, for he valued the life of each man in his army even above his own.  Where other commanders of armies before him would have been willing to sacrifice their men—their mere conscripts and foot soldiers-—King Decoltur carefully maneuvered his troops to avoid casualty with extraordinary caution. 

This proved to be an advantage in the long run, as his soldiers not only were willing to die for their cause, but came to trust his every command with the power of the hope that they might both live and be victorious.  And, after years of battle, those mere conscripts, rather than dying on the front lines in a tactical exchange of lives, grew into a formidable and well-trained fighting force. 

After a number of years, the enemy was conquered and peace restored to the land.  A monument to the fallen soldiers was erected, and, as time passed, the kingdom began again to prosper, and the scars of the war began to fade from the realm.  So, too, with the remedies of both time and soothing songs of his queen, did the nightmares of King Decoltur begin to fade. 

But even after the war had come an end, and after his kingdom and his mind were mostly healed, the king and the queen still could not bear a child. 

Chapter 1: Before it was Drained Away—Part 1

Once upon a time there was a dreary kingdom ruled by a weary and bitter king.  Now, a kingdom thus ruled isn't a very happy place—in fact, it is rarely a happy place at all.  King Decoltur, however, hadn't always been the cold and saddened man he had come to be. 

At the beginning of his reign and in the prime of his life, the young king might have been numbered among the happiest men alive.  He was kind and just, and with confidence lead the kingdom in prosperity.  He prided himself in the care he took to come to know and understand the individuals over whom he ruled, and his people loved him for it. 

Just as beloved, if not more so, was the beautiful and kindly Queen Florryn.  While her husband's great care for the people stemmed at least partially from a sense of duty, Queen Florryn's welled up from the simple goodness of her heart.  She seemed able to summon forth a love of nearly infinite extent for all those she knew, and even for those she had only heard of but never met.  Besides being graced with so gentle and boundless a sense of compassion, she had great gift in music, and possessed the loveliest of singing voices.  When she sang, she always brought the happiest of smiles to the face of the king and immeasurable joy to his heart. 

King Decoltur loved Queen Florryn, and she him.  A stronger love than theirs has not ever been recorded in all the histories of men, and probably never will be.  Each accompanied the other in most everything, and the twain never spent a night apart.  They intuitively seemed to understand each other, which, though in other cases may have only made such conversation obsolete, made their conversation that much richer.  Each was more than truthful and faithful with the other—they hid nothing, and always sought to improve themselves and their love.  Indeed, each made the other a better person, calling forth all that was good in the other and inspiring it to flourish (though it was generally recognized that the queen greater influenced the king for good that he was could ever so influence her). 

They two would often, after long and tiring days, spend the evening immersed in music.  He would play his violin while she sang the lines of the love poems that one or the other had penned.  Anyone who happened to hear them could not help but smile and have his spirits lifted. 

Yes, they were in love. 

Although it was always understood that the king would sacrifice anything to protect his people and his kingdom, it can only be wondered if he would have chosen his wife over his kingdom, had it ever come to such a choice.