You started giving orders
From the moment you were crowned
This love affair with darkness
Was the crux of your renown

With nothing in your past
That showed you ever would be king
No statement of a fact to prove
That all who rock must sing

A stone’s throw and a backbeat
Were the methods you inclined
To circumvent the critics
Who believed you’d lost your mind

With nothing in your past
To show a momentary lapse
The reasons or the wear with all
To watch your world collapse

So heavy was your twisted heart
As rotten as you rolled
But you just kept them guessing
With the virtues that you stole

Creating pure disaster
As you let them kiss your ring
But friendship is the missing link
For those who would be king

Yet so much more is taken
Than can ever be replaced
The sky is not the limit
When you’re hanging out in space

Your stars will burn to embers
As you stare into the night
Chasing dreams across the sky
Until they’re out of sight

This royal blood may flood
The mind with images and such
But can’t compare to teenage rage
Or dreams we never touch

So let us leave the king to burn
For something to contrast
My story takes a left turn
To a vision from the past

Perchance you may discover
Something alien at best
Imagining the details
Of a poor court jester’s quest

I stepped outside the window
Left a note and I was free
And journeyed to a distant land
Where maybe I could see

The burning that was in my mind
Was not so much a fire
But more a force of will
To change despair into desire

My life back then was nothing
But four small walls closing in
Frustration in a nutshell
With my patience wearing thin

Medicated
Complicated
Life inside a dream
Isolated
Amplicated
Whispers to a scream

Just as tunnel vision narrows
Every point of view
Leaves you stuck inside your head
Not knowing what to do

A question of perspective
Nothing more or nothing less
To choose to give the doctor
Truthful answers or a guess

Beside myself, I crumbled
When confronting any choice
Reactions turned to silence
Even though I had a voice

And so I killed the King one night
In front of all his court
And took fate as my prisoner
A lesson to be taught

For dying is the common ground
Between a king and fool
And change is the exception
Not the measure of the rule

The king is dead
Long live the lie
Engraved in living stone
The echoes never-ending
Because the jester’s on the throne

The court is not in session
But the band continues playing
As peasants wait and wonder
At the foolish things
He’s saying

TM DiSarro

©2023 TM DiSarro / MindScapes Publishing

From my book: EVERY WICKED BIRD

https://linktr.ee/tmdisarro