Holding the remnants of a heart still warm with pulsing blood,
he stood amidst swelling malaise and felt nothing,
hardly even a vague stirring in the pits of his soul.
His rancour fell above mere secular speculation –
so paramount was his rule, and he was well-accustomed to
such an easy, unassuming lifestyle; thus, it continued.
Yet light comes quickly and gives no warning,
harbouring a long-forgotten dream
and bestowing upon its captives an unusual punishment –
belief, faith, hopeless hope, and anticipation,
a renewed sense of texture in the intricacies of time,
and, underneath it all, a fear of fear itself.
“Save us,” they cried to him, “We cannot hate, we cannot love,
we cannot feel for feeling's sake.”,
but, seeing his demise in the startling light of day,
he hid his face behind a crown of thorns
and, rather regretfully, relinquished his sovereignty.
An end of an era, and all too soon!
Woe that such a corporeal life should fall,
and hearts be dragged writhing into a land
connected by nerves and hormones, rapidly firing synapses
feeling too much, saying too little, encased in a tomb of bone.
There is naught to do but fly with that knowledge, or else weep,
that you now hold the power to feel,
to dance, to jump, to cry, to sing,
to gulp down the sap of life as you please, or not at all –
that obsidian milk lurking in the stars
and showing itself only to sunken cheekbones
and hallowed souls as old as time itself,
grown cold and weary under the light of day.