I’m like some satrap of the monsoon season,
Puffed up with cash, but flaccid in the act,
Who sucks his teeth at the low bows of his teachers
And catalogues his dog subgenus of some beast.
Nothing gives him joy: no hunt, not the falcon that feasts
Nor his subjects dying en masse at his feet
Nor the half-arsed pranks of his favourite clown
Nothing can ease his aching temples, soothe his head.
His bed becomes a florid mockery of his tomb.
And those ‘serving’ ladies, who’ll prick any man a prince
Can’t flash a cut of flesh undead enough to purse
A smile from this cunt’s famine lips.
No phlebotomist could filter out the filth
That stains the living archive of his blood.
His sins are Roman. Ancient Of the sort
That power makes and buries in its own corrupted soil.
Powerless, he cannot thrill his dead skin into life
But greens beneath his own forgetting, impotent, still.
Skip to content
Dog Standard 