On My Crown of Envy

Gritted teeth grinding into rough cinders
The ash of a thousand spurns in my mouth
While you glory in the mud of smugness
Your face cloying with its curdled pleading

I hurl my hurts into this black abyss
And now from this yawning, drowning distance
I can feel the dark fire of thwarted hopes 
They scald with the flames of unholy wrath

And this crown of envy melts my skull down
With the heat of a thousand glaring suns
That burns these sunken cheeks and boils away
My angry tears - they wither with the light.  

On a Happy Report

I am here to report
that I am happy
happy, happy beyond my wildest dreams
and that despite your
most fervent hopes
I did not fall into despair
I did not flail into disrepair

and despite your
most confident expectations
your leaving
was the best thing
that could have happened
your absence
was what truly saved me

I am here to report
that I need nothing from you
that my happiness no longer depends
on wondering if you are happy too.

On These Final Days

These final few days with you
I count the slip of each grain of Time
through this hollow corridor of darkened glass
Murky, the Future veiled beneath
the drip, drip, drip of the Flood to come.

Like Noah, I brood in the dark
for the deluge that awaits.

On Thieves and Heroes (or, Twenty-Five Years and Forty-Seven Lies)

For twenty-five years, brisk demands 
For change, for moral politics -
A reborn nation, confident
That Justice can stand unafraid -
Now finally claim centre stage
Your avatar can claim his prize.

But look - what fateful compromise!
What cruel bargain - filth-stained hands!
With faithless smiles, with hands aclasp
These erstwhile foes declare their pact
Amidst blithe claims of kingly seal
Your "unity" swept all sins clean

And now you reap your poisoned fruit
A bitter harvest for your sham
And twenty-five years' promises
Are trumped by forty-seven lies
The deathly grin unmasked, unshamed
Bears witness to your blotted vows

The thieves you pledged to overthrow
Walk lockstep with your heroes now.