How did the son reward the king?
With the gutter gold of everything!
With the ways and means to spend his wealth
...to steel and lie
like brazen filth
and never feel the less for it.
How did the wife reward the spouse?
...with terror in the golden house!
With guilt
at the edge
of a serpant's tongue
with which the prince became a mouse
and went his way to an early death.
How did the mother love her child?
With wedding parties shrill and loud!
With ways to fix his poor esteem
and send his childhood terrors south
until he struck her in the mouth
and sucked the bottle like her breast
and likewise struck his wife as well
and raised her children up in Hell
those rare times that he saw the lot.
How did the mother love the Lord
...at funerals which the dead afford!
...with rancor toward the bitter end
toward husband, child, and finally friend
for all but the last had died before.
The fool plays with his deadly rod
...and lovely maidens look toward God
and money
such a god might send.
And given that, they fall asleep
counting coins the way fools count sheep
in order to earn what others keep
like precious royal seed gone deep
in the belly of a whore.