Constantine

            Or, a viral gone postal. A clickbait.

“I am king of all lies before!”

Did this king, ‘Constantine’ decree:

The road I see, the call to war,

My subjects, status evermore,

My truth, my people, with me.

The songbird in my garden calls;

I might be higher than the walls.

Here, the garden grows thick and strong, a rich odour,

Beyond fallen are lost from view, too far down.

I smell the rose for memories fonder,

The grass is greener where I lay my crown.

Stil now, every day a mystery invented,

A crack in my middle finger appears.

Something sent with love, received and mis-intended,

As e’er beneath a waning moon was halted,

My commands have driven mothers to tears.

The well of power, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

Forced through me since the day I started breathing.

My mighty fingers radiate to the cursed;

From my eyes, half intermitted burst,

Middle finger on the radio dial,

Pushing buttons, too fast to fail.

And ‘mid my flies to swat once and forever,

All the blood I spilt has become a river.

I’m stuck in perpetual motion

I try to remember those who ran,

Then reached the caverns measureless to man,

And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:

And mid this tumult, ‘Songbird’ I saw

What it sang I could hear no more.

The universe I was meant to build

On the finest grain of sand,

With bums on seats, I can say I filled,

I made you all take my hand.

I am a miracle of rare distress,

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of mess.

The songbird that once sung to me,

Out of sight, too far to see:

It was an Abyssinian bird, 

She went with a twitter, I heard.

What matters is behind me, 

I can make it great again!

My symphony and song,

To such a deep delight ‘twould win me.

That with music loud and long;

I would build that wall of air,

That sunny wall! Dreams of success!

And all who heard me should see me there, 

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

My fake tan skin, my floating hair!

I weave the circle, I confess,

I close my eyes, bury my head

For I, on my own farts have fed,

And drunk the milk of my own press.

First published December 2016

Based on Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, (1816)