The Duke of Hollow Hold

Sonnets

The Duke of Hollow Hold
Soliloquy 

I.
I query blood and ask the bitterest question,
What good, burden of death, I say what good?
You’ve fallen silent, no longer plead suggestion,
Of yourself, your continuation; Oh that you would!
But only false fruit have you grown for harvest,
Have either picked too early small sour fruit,
Or let alone those which have grown the farthest,
And left them ripe to drop upon the root.
Heart of my heart, why cease to beat you sloth,
To be a silent sower of empty seed?
Why weigh me so, with heavy husks of loss,
If that your end is not to be but bleed?
    Why flow my every vein and fill with pride,
    If fruit is fruit of failure to multiply.

II.
Blood—the pounding and trembling blood,
Your gavel hammers inside, aching for release,
As like a red tulip on the cusp of bud,
Or bees at frenzied pitch from fallen queen.
I judge you, you judge me; your wordless defense
Reverberates within my deafened ear,
The thumping judgment thunders unrelent,
This tolling verdict, a prison of fear.  
Ah, but I know your source, genetic spring,
The withered root that nurtured my own leaves
Of mineral both fair, foul, and given free;
Our trade of bloom and rot, our mutual reave. 
    I reckon guilt, but you reckon me back,
    Your weakly root against my blossom’s lack.

III.
I hear the hounds at hunt, growling in my blood,
I see the moon speaking in my fevered dreams,
And despite my best intent, I have not withstood,
The irksome dead with their calling screams.
And now thirsting for lively mannish blood,
After centuries sleeping in lifeless death,
I know not the time, or place, or where I’ve stood
Endlessly panting a corpse’s breath.
The past has betrayed me and bled me blind,
Stole away my happy, crowded years,
Fattened my flesh with wisened wicked lies,
Without fatigue—the sanity of fear.
    Forever pressing, pleading; where is the blood?
    Show me damn you, confess, where is my blood? 

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