You are a king
And I, the court fool
Sometimes a lady, or if luck pleases, a faithful courtesan
But my cowardice always crowns me with the dunce cap with bells

Perhaps it was in December or January,
When a greying mob member tumbled down the stairs.
Perhaps, they said, it was because he was old and weary,
They told me “Do not speak”, for fear I would meddle in their affairs.

They told me “Do not look”,
For fear that I would empathise and find, what a cold dead body could yield.
To look into the grey glass eyes of a wife abusing crook,
For I would find the last embers of a carefree child in the fields.

I've been to several of these before,
The monotony of incense crackle and firecracker smoke.
They dance nonchalantly around in circles, performing their sacred rituals,
Throwing dirt with their mouths and hands upon the dead and living.

Will they weep at my funeral
Or will they snicker and say good riddance?
Random stranger reading my honey drenched eulogy,
Why so cynical?
Am I the only happy nihilist out there
Oh, will you cry happy tears at my funeral?

We will awaken from our deep slumber with new clarity
cleansed and healed.
We shall return to our weary world refreshed,
united in our losses and lessons learned.

We will remember them as the flowers that grow amongst the graves,
as Maytime thunder, deeply scarring and searing
we shall hold candles to their names,
burn ablaze the bright path ahead

It shall pass like a dream, nights of battling unseen beasts from beyond long gone,
dazed but knowing certain that it had passed.
The days will no longer bleed and blur into one another,
But rather, we shall step forth into blooming horizons renewed, refreshed

As long as the human spirit is not extinguished
The flame of hope shall be rekindled,
for now, spring is here -

And the world begins anew