King of Tears

The pools of sadness I have left behind Broil and lie stagnating abandoned on the heath, Their surfaces are restless, ill-defined, Ripple-shot, concealing of the things that drown beneath. The refugees of memories I suppress, Wander lost and lonely, ragged ghosts out on the fen, Decrepitly awaiting life’s caress, That sparks them scant existence now and then. The infamy of love that I have borne, Beaten down and buried, walled in tombs of quarry stone, Left nothing of themselves that I should mourn, Nothing I could cleave to as a trigger to atone. So gather ‘round you soothsayers and seers, To charge the glass with misery and chase the whisky down, For I will tell you of the king of tears, The resist of abdication and the need to wear the crown.