Fireworks keep the kooks nailed on tenterhooks
inside the asylum in cloistered cells,
riddled with worry, fear and trembling hands,
even the queen kept her nose in her books,
worried not for herself or the others,
only for the caretaker of the bells,
religion plays no part in waving wands,
kindling in the storage cellar may yet
set the house ablaze with all the brothers,
kind words the queen uncovers, once her own,
even she cannot remember she wrote
engagingly to save lost souls, a bone
picked up out of a field, ancient, a note
touchingly etched to the surface, a bet
humorously played between two chieftains,
even her scholarship drifts with the fog,
kin against kin, king against king, the land
objects to men calling it property,
only trees, rivers and glades understand,
kings of prehistory write poetry
simply to impress the wives of their men,
no one knows why they wrote in quatorzains,
as six follows eight, though seven ate nine,
in terms of mathematics, the sequence
leaves five off the hook, the mad tenterhooks
even the residents never discuss,
diminish fog with smoke to produce smog,
on her bed, in her room, a broken spine,
not her own, but the baseline for her books,
the kings of yore never had time to fuss,
even for a moment, over the dense
nostalgia for their time, they wrote for Gwen,
to her knowledge, she could not understand,
ever the prize of kings on battlefields,
restless, her locks, represented on shields,
harmlessly portrayed as an octopus,
on one shield, red, on the other shield, black,
only her locks were white, looped into rings,
knowledge escaped the queen of the cloisters,
still her books made her the queen of the kooks.
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