Ingots of ivory lay piled
adjacent to marble plated pillars;
Swords championed by forgotten names
are dulled in desolate hallways on dark, decaying plaques.

Madness melts the walls to his vision;
baroque as an honor killing
and black as obsidian.
He lavishes and bathes in the thorns
and bones of dead roses.
Guilt floods the cellar
and warps the history of those who slept
in the iron-clad embrace of rusted chains.

His head is too heavy to carry
and breaks off onto the grass;
The last thing he sees as his eyes
glaze over like a beast before the knife
is his domain, decaying and dim;
Stairways heading nowhere that border
dining halls as incinerated as the meats
once served there.

He sees the moat dried
and the garrison speared on their own tools of justice
to be left rotting before an eternal Judge.
He turns away, however,
at the sight of the first Spring buds to erupt
from below the soil;
So horrified to know that his citadel
will be demolished to make way for the next monarch’s garden.