death with a two-year reprieve is your sentence,
i hear from the ostentatious guards. one of them proclaims
“how awful it is to be consigned to death and spend
the rest of your life knowing that it has an exact date.”
i thought it surprisingly polemical,
but you didn’t want to hear this from me.
a couple of days later you said that “now
the king has cancer, although not of his Prostate.
he knows that he will die someday, a
regent in name, a regent in action.
at least he gets a bbc news notification.”
i wanted to make a joke about Prostates again,
maybe something about lying prostrate to charles,
but the inexorable atmosphere prevented a witty remark.