Fireworks

 

Floris 56 x 42 cm acrylic on paper

THE KING’S DAUGHTERS

                                                             …you think you’re so clever and classless and free

                                                             But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.

                                                                  From WORKING CLASS HERO, John Lennon

The King’s daughters made their father a gift of

three Arabian steeds, after which he chopped off

their husbands’ heads—some plot

or other, badly planned, sloppily carried out—

   rain pattering down

on the blood-slicked platform. A concert, banners shaken

by a rowdy spring wind, a procession, the entire

court admiring itself on horseback. Thousands of the unwashed

surging against a wall of palace guards the plumes

of whose helmets a glossy, sticky-looking red. Another royal wedding, another

stiff-limbed cadet, undistinguished but impressively uniformed, marching

to the scaffold of an open carriage, always the same one

the ecstatic multitude, lining the roads, applauding every

procedure: a million flags hanging limply from damp fists.