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| 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.
