The Watcher, III or Falls the King / by M. Dionne Ward





Some say the world will move on. Yet, what would it move on to?
Watching, cataloging ambitious jests
and surly men crouching like hungry beasts
to feed, to fulfill, to breed
and follow the irony in the culmination of experience.
They are slaves.
Rambling, haggard slaves chained to their past, linked to nothing.

And the world will move on
The shameless, boastful world of many proud men
sinful braggarts that breathe dust,
washing their hands in watery rust
There is no cleansing. There is no surgical procedure that will mend.
But you and I, you and I will meet at the end.
In the end we are slaves, carrying our chains and hanging our heads.

A watcher, watching a once hopeful now full of futility,
perished memory sliding through the slits in a soul
trickling down reminding, rewinding a mind that imploded
trusting trinkets and shiny rocks and forgetting that Death
should be held close. Life is the Enemy.
They hold on too much, hanging heads and singing hymns
heaping their trust in God when they can't trust themselves.

Where does it begin to topple? He muses majesty and
believes in power, so the mind grasps the esoteric,
puffed up like a pillow on manly deeds that profess
kingship. The king becomes the pawn, and the pawn falls
like the rest.
Falls the king.
Following a dream.
Founding a lie.