The Defenestration of the King’s Lovers
The king’s subjects would suck out his grief, die for him
if he asked. The question,
never articulated, hangs
in the void between dreams
and shakes those who wake with an unspeakable terror,
causing them to live fitfully or fruitfully, whatever difference
tilling fields and copulating behind the haystacks makes, church-
going, swimming through heat, which makes them wet
and shameful and desirous to no end when eying
the sultry dance of bees above beds of chicory,
the teasing body in its lone moment of self-expression.
Day after day, until the daughter is married, the mules
traded, they wait out their lives for the king,
watching over this, to grow
lonely,
as a sessile oak,
and needful
of a hand’s imprint, the vulgarity
of some instrument’s teeth, any reminder
that life isn’t worth death.
Summer turns to autumn when the king hosts
an elaborate masque, a joust, a Fête des Fous -
Only self-shackled agents of revolution can afford to miss
such tumescent happiness, the king says - with
jesters destitute of ego, cooks of lowest eloquence
for the onerous excess of papillae on their tongues,
players of highest study and wit and with the loudest claques,
and afterwards
he invites the daintiest virgins to sacrifice
themselves for his pleasure.
Being impotent (the word
means something different to him), the act
feels like an uprising against God.
Yet he needs this. He needs this
like you need water, or the heat
the air. You do not know what he loses
with each kiss, each touch, each girl
he tosses off the parapet. I am me, he says,
clutching himself.
That night, fitfully,
fruitfully, all the kingdom
fucks and multiples, unsmiling.
if he asked. The question,
never articulated, hangs
in the void between dreams
and shakes those who wake with an unspeakable terror,
causing them to live fitfully or fruitfully, whatever difference
tilling fields and copulating behind the haystacks makes, church-
going, swimming through heat, which makes them wet
and shameful and desirous to no end when eying
the sultry dance of bees above beds of chicory,
the teasing body in its lone moment of self-expression.
Day after day, until the daughter is married, the mules
traded, they wait out their lives for the king,
watching over this, to grow
lonely,
as a sessile oak,
and needful
of a hand’s imprint, the vulgarity
of some instrument’s teeth, any reminder
that life isn’t worth death.
Summer turns to autumn when the king hosts
an elaborate masque, a joust, a Fête des Fous -
Only self-shackled agents of revolution can afford to miss
such tumescent happiness, the king says - with
jesters destitute of ego, cooks of lowest eloquence
for the onerous excess of papillae on their tongues,
players of highest study and wit and with the loudest claques,
and afterwards
he invites the daintiest virgins to sacrifice
themselves for his pleasure.
Being impotent (the word
means something different to him), the act
feels like an uprising against God.
Yet he needs this. He needs this
like you need water, or the heat
the air. You do not know what he loses
with each kiss, each touch, each girl
he tosses off the parapet. I am me, he says,
clutching himself.
That night, fitfully,
fruitfully, all the kingdom
fucks and multiples, unsmiling.