(This is going to be a bit different. It isn’t a poem like I normally write. This is a story, that is also a poem. It is the story of a good man slowly dying, falling to the hands of a monster, until, one day, he finally gives up and becomes a monster himself.)
Comments on this particular post would be very much appreciated.
___
The Story of the Throne of Stone (Written September 18, 2014)
In hallow hall there sits a throne,
Where king there sees all to bemoan,
Yet strait, and tall, and proud he sits;
And drinks his wine and drowns his wits.
In hollow hall, by throne of stone,
The mad king sits and drinks alone.
So goes the tale of the good king’s despise,
So tells the tale of when a good man dies…
This is the story of a good man, of a noble king. Of a king who cared for his people. He worked hard to mend his broken kingdom. For five years he worked, never resting, because he loved his kingdom and he wanted his subjects to live in peace. But he did not know his people. So busy with his work, the king remained in his castle and worked and worked. He knew it was not good to neglect seeing his people though, so after five years in his castle he decided to have a festival so the kingdom could celebrate another year of peace. But when the king met his people, eager to see them finally happy, he saw that they hated him, and he could not tell why.
The crowds glared with hatred,
and at the very back,
taller than all the rest,
stood a figure cloaked in black.
But, his face was hidden from eager sight
in the cowl of a hood as dark as midnight.
Years went by. The king sat in his study and watched his son play outside the window. His son was his pride and joy. But he looked on in sadness, for he could not remember his own name. His wife called their son inside as rain began to fall, and the king cried bitter tears, for he had forgotten his own name.
And there beneath the tree it stood
a black robed figure with a night dark hood,
It seemed to watch the woeful king
holding a silver goblet, as if in offering.
The king sat in the throne room and stared at the foot of the throne. His son was laying there, unmoving, red blood staining his blonde hair. The king clutched his son, willing him to wake up again. But he would not, not ever awake again.
And as his royal robes were stained
with the blood of his son so loved,
over the king stood the cowled figure
with his black as midnight hood
holding a silver goblet
full of too red wine.
And the king he longed to drink it,
but was in his heart resigned.
For he was a king, and could not rest,
though his heart ached so in pain,
he would fulfill his royal duties-
but behind him the figure remained.
The king stood at his bedside in his royal chambers. His wife laid there with her white hands still grasping the knife in her chest, cold and dead when her attempt to remove it failed. Blind with grief, the king searched his castle for the man he would never find, the man who killed his beloved wife. He stood at the tower window and stared out over the hundreds of people outside the walls of his castle. Their torches lit up the starless night showed him the hatred on their faces. The king fell to his knees and pounded his fist on the wall in despair.
So distracted was he by his searing tears,
he almost did not see
the black cloaked figure standing there,
watching his happiness flee.
With silver goblet of too red wine
clutched in his skeletal grip,
the figure stood behind the king
and watched the hopes that began to slip.
The king sat on his cold stone throne and looked upon his throne room. Before him stood the people he had spent his life trying to help. At the foot of his throne was a stain that could not be washed away, at his side an empty seat that would never again be filled. And from behind the throne, where nobody else could see, came a voice that spoke to the king softly. It whispered so quietly that none else would hear, and told him how it had ruined the king’s reign. How the orders had been hidden, the laws the king had rewritten changed. He had ruined his kingdom without ever knowing it, and for that his people hated him. And then the whisper told him, with a voice like poisoned honey, how it had lead the king’s angry citizens to kill his son, and stab his wife, and come at arms against their king.
And beside the empty, hollow chair
a black cloaked figure was standing there,
with a hood as black as midnight,
and a silver goblet of too red wine in its skeletal hands so white.
It watched the king through empty eyes,
as the hope he holds begins to die.
The king stared out at his empty throne room. His people had fallen to civil war, his family had been murdered. All his work had been undone. He was old, and he was tired, and he had failed at all he had tried. And there, at the foot his throne stood the black cloaked figure with the hood as black as midnight, holding the silver goblet of too red wine in its skeletal hands, watching the king through it’s empty eyes. The king thought of his bygone years and stumbled from his throne, grasping in empty despair at the silver goblet. But, alas, when he grasped the goblet the figure vanished. The king turned around in desperation and searched for the figure again, but it had disappeared. Yet there, on the arm of his throne, stood a bottle of wine. The king rushed to it, and guzzled it, and wished that it would end, but it would not. For it was not the too red wine that he drank, and it would never end his sorrows.
And so the king drank as he slumped on the floor,
while behind the throne stood the figure once more,
still cloaked in black with a hood of midnight,
still holding a silver goblet of red wine too bright
in its skeletal hands, as it watched through empty eyes-
behold the tragedy of when a good man dies.
___
THANK YOU FOR READING! PLEASE RATE AND REPLY!
Journal Of Poems 