Don’t you know? This is all.

Shagged skin on pavement, lying

old age scattered, drown in sewers

coalesced with magical tears of the muddy river

ever-black, ever-ramshackle.

A country without children,

a barren land of hope —

fruitful of fears, deaths, and common trepidation.

All of this. Crookery. Poverty. Violence.

Lives wrecked. Unborn Ghosts —

it’s just a king’s biopolar power trip,

don’t you know?