The Emperor Dreams of Immortality

Fall unto despair and let sleep all.
The curtain of night rises and falls.
The couriers are silent, the advisors, still,
as cockcrow and dogsong
that this heated night prolongs.

Tremors run under lengths of silk, the heft
of an ancient lineage and the blooming glories
of long-dead dynasties in years long left.
We lose our heart in the face of death.
We call out for the curtain, for the rising breath
to cease and subsist on nothing but time’s lofty entrails.

Lose the crown, the flowers will do.
In curtains of red and fogged blue.

The palace of jade or the rooftops of gold?
Beyond parlance of maids, under hoof drops unfold.

I fall through straits of time
to settle down beside you like an open hand.

The moon swung bare like an Egyptian clock,
dust caving in and the adorned walls
covered with sand.

The mountains are heavy with birdsong
and ospreys cry out in the dew-still air.

I am dreaming of tomorrow
in her fine gowns and thin waist,
her necklace of jade and summer pearls,
thin wrists, small feet, a thousand girls
wringing their hands just like her. Smiling smiles,
wringing hearts, squeezing their chests
in utter frustration.

What a nothingness arises from me.
What a pile of misery. What a shambling
wreckage of thought.