My Unruly Garden-Plot

I.
I am the last of solemn kings - or first -
My crown ill-fit where wreathed upon my brow -
Red-gold, the binding color of my vows,
As if a man might wear, and show, his worth,
But as to whether I come last, or first -
If one is better, it is not my seat
To judge; my fate is not so tailored neat,
And oftentimes, as blessed as must be cursed,
And comes the worst - to dream of dust, and rule
A kingdom's worth of marbled soot - a clown,
To some - a flower bled to stain my brow -
Red-gold, the motley garb of kings and fools,
Alike. All men are kings, some say, and I -
I drank of dust, and parlayed dust as wine.


II.
I drank of dust, and parlayed dust as wine,
As velvet-rich a liquor on my tongue
As honey to a babe - that thirst, my drug,
And as I thirsted, so confessed it mine -
I morphed into the gnawing void that shook
My tepid dreams, 'til I could no more sleep
Than take to wing over canyons deep
And wide - all I might ever own, it took,
And pleaded me become the eventide's
Born acolyte, my shadow more than black -
Scarlet and indigo and violet matte -
Where hence my bright spirit would come to lie
In acres of dead drought and wilted vines,
Forsaken to the lusts of men and time.


III.
Forsaken to the lusts of men and time,
All I own, I trust to today, alone;
And should the pale morrow not see it home,
Then I will curse its rise, and rage, and cry -
And surely forget. The forgetting comes,
So subtly I miss it - and slowly spreads,
A slate as white as the earliest treads
Of frost-bit fields, and should life be that sum
Of stolen memories - a manuscript
Replete with words and deeds I cannot claim,
But own; my dreams, exposed; for just the same,
They mark a man who might have been; a script
Of all I lost - then I will sign the words -
I've lived more long and sweet than I deserve.


IV.
I've lived more long and sweet than I deserve -
On whose authority I cannot say -
Perhaps my name is drawn afresh each day,
A whim of chance among a teeming herd
Of billions; each day, to be born again,
My blinking eyes agleam with naked rays
Of light sojourned from traverses of space
I scarcely fathom; light and life sliced thin
And incorporeal; a world of old,
Serpentine dunes made liquid gold and fire,
Consumed as much as fed - a grasping pyre,
Dissolved by leagues into the disc that holds
My warmth and zeal atop the firmament,
Abreast the silent gods of ghosts and men.


V.
Abreast the silent gods of ghosts and men,
Pale streetlights rest on every swell and hill -
Block by block, they fade, having had their fill
Of dusk; not I, for I am not of men,
Not here - I shed my skin, my tongue, my clothes,
And walk, in step, with those that came before -
Devoid of kin or namesake left to score
Their feeble marks upon this feeble host -
I share my watch with ghosts. Others come: fell,
Grey gargoyles leering over eaves of stone,
Their petrified scales as exposed as bone
Or flesh - they guard their many secrets well,
As I my own; if kin, no friends are we -
No friends have I, and none shall I bespeak.


VI.
No friends have I, and none shall I bespeak;
I fold to nature's sway: the unmarked sky,
My azure shroud - my stalking grounds - as wide
And wild as crests upon a shoreless sea;
I lose my self in that vast, constant hue,
And glimpse the anonymous face of time
And being - never knowing how nor why,
Nor thinking, once, to ask. I soar, renewed,
My worries left amidst the rock and loam -
A healing quaff, against an illness seeped
In slow and subtle measure - a disease
Of more than chains and fetters - seedlings sewn
By failures. I discard them, here - for here,
I fly on eagle's wings - or so I dream.


VII.
I fly on eagle's wings - or so I dream -
Come noon, I find myself a man once more,
My shoulder set to weather rote and chore
And call it living; others, too, I meet,
On stifling avenues of baked concrete,
Their roles as yoked upon them as my own -
Swindlers, some - mothers, dreamers - actors sold
Upon the hardwood of the stage; we meet,
All tethered to our fate, declaiming words
I just as soon forget - we part our ways,
Amidst those russet city-sweeps, and pay
Our dues and duties fair and ask the world
To find us fair, in turn - a wish bled thin,
As fragile, there, as held by hands of men.


VIII.
As fragile, there, as held by hands of men -
My heartbeat pulsing, tuneless, deaf - a song
For younger souls - but I have traveled long
And far, paths that spider and roads that blend,
Until both are scarcely more than a stiff,
Sore ache; and as the crowds more closely press,
The markets I once loved are strange, at best -
And as to whether I am changed, or them,
I cannot rightly judge - I keep the earth,
More closely now than then, letting the rust
Of coffee-ground dirt stain my hands and dust
The lens through which I see the rising world
For all its homes and budding hopes, alike;
I see the world for all its mirth and life.


IX.
I see the world for all its mirth and life -
My lady dancing free - her scarf, a bright,
Sheer lavender, as sinuous and light
As sunbeams scattered on a field of white
And lilac blooms; she wore her hair in curls,
And come the springtime's festive haul, she'd bring
A sum of flowers plucked and bound in rings;
Our crowns, said she, and for a time the world
Seemed endless. Time - we held it, for awhile,
Until a seed of silence took to root -
A seed, and nothing more - but where it grew,
It blossomed, until all we were had died;
I wear a flower, sometimes still: a curse;
I am the last of solemn kings - or first.