Story Poem, Nr.18 — King's Carousel

The executioner stood rehearsing in a dismal fog    
swinging his axe down hard upon a log    
of stately proportions.    
This was one that had to be good,    
right first time, neat, complete    
in one simplistic blow.    
His client had reached the top    
no place left to go, ‘cept    
upwards in a heavenly flow, though she,    
the executioner thought,    
desired not at all to know this sort    
of early morning awakening.    
    
“It will bode well for me”    
the Queen thought expectantly, watching    
from her after-midnight cell    
“The executioner practises his art so well, and    
freely I shall be released    
to the next life, arriving, concise,    
discover how fully distorted their theology,    
how contorted their apology will be.    
Last rites duly administered, but not for me and    
my soul, rather for the King’s, who with the Bishop’s    
seal of authority in the rings    
will stamp it down, hard, upon my waxen hair.    
I do not wish to be their fare, do not    
want to submit to their carefully wrought    
scheming, but there’s no redeeming this one now”.    
   
The Queen, lead out, head held high    
for the gasping people to spy her beauty first-hand:    
last chance before she took to the sky.      
The King, observing on a    
royal chair from a distance, looked on    
with grim satisfaction at what his persistence    
had achieved.  Hand-in-hand with the new    
Queen-to-be, she realised a son would    
have to be soonly given, else she too might likewise    
be so similarly riven.    
   
Black hood pulled down, Queen prepared on    
block, Bishop sickly teetering on the    
brink of self-denial at his compliance: the    
bloody scene all set for the sudden final silence.    
   
A beautiful bird flew low, startling few    
twix’d eyes so otherwise fixed, as axe was    
raised, crowd not breathing then    
all dazed as axe came down to mark the    
transfer of the crown, the bird valiantly    
swooped surely there and with talons gently lifted    
the head’s estate, dangling by her long golden hair:    
was flown by intervention of the gods    
dripping blood across the crowds    
to where the King sat,    
applauding no more, but in astonishment    
as the bird drops the Queen’s head    
into his lap …. dead.    
   
The King, splatted with the blood of    
her finery, forced to look up close and    
personal at his handiwork done so considerably    
in an incomplete manner, dumps head    
upon the waiting queen and rushes away    
from the scene to his royal chamber, where,    
kneeling before a lesser god he did remember,    
implores, beseeches, wishes this was all a rehearsal,    
not too late to change the time, amend    
direction of events, a reversal to reconsider    
his soul agenda –  pushed away a thought of hell,    
and thought, rather ill, of a chance to climb up onto    
a different carousel.