Having Been an Accomplice

My rule and my reach will collapse
into a shadow of hair.

Collapse further into a stain
on the floor.

Body, so watery and delicate.
living on air and prepared dishes.

This smallness frets me,
no I fret it. I am laced in tight to it.

Breathlessness. Throats
I slit or would have slit

to prevent my own slitting,
to remain for even a moment more.

The police will descend and ascend,
moving up and down the ladder of heaven.

When I look at them to join them
I will be spitting.

I will be as horrid as anything dying,
as unapproachable, my ladylike nature

intact, not tacked on, but in
and spilling out.

My governance,
my jurisdiction is tainted

with cowardliness, with what I've done
for my own advance.

The revolutionaries stack themselves
as wood and burn.

Then stack themselves again and burn.
Their demand is fair: my end.

But I can't. I've a very small time
left in the palace.

I've got to go out on the balcony again
and feel the air.