The Emperor

Yet another poetic experiment

He sits on his crystalline throne formed from context and co-creation

Watching the spinning wheels of the angelic hierarchies as the rock opera

Unfurls from the deepest spigot of raw ontologies.

-

He seeks for the Empress, the High Priestess, in high places and low.

He doubles down on his latest designer drug fetish. His Burning Man

Art car blows away in the dawn, a waste of feathers and fetters.

He invests 100 million in three biotech startups to preserve his physical

Organism for eternity via synthetic organ transplants, genetic remixing,

Or by anti-freezing his consciousness in a vat of liquid crucifixion. He writes

-

His terrifying memoirs under a pen name, telepathically dictated

into the abyss through a team of attentive eunuchs

Who frenetically anticipate his every scabrous syllable.

The Emperor, old now, remembers when time first erupted out of duration.

He remembers the mulch of Grails, Pyramids, Stone Circles, how they

Undertook ancient secret quests seeking the furnace of creation.

-

He remembers when the Empress first learned the hieroglyphic code.

If only he could find her now, amidst the shattered coves and seaweed shards.

He looks down on his army from the castle walls and raises his sword.

-

The Emperor forgets his own name at the press conference and wanders

Into the dark forest where the tangled filaments of organic silence

Overwhelm him, snaking around his corpulent form.

-

The empire yearns for the return of its father/founder/figurehead,

But not this time — new wars beat new rhythmic asymmetries; “tempis

Fugit” says the fugitive, splashing his way forward.

**

I wrote that poem, then collaborated with AI to create a Sestina version of it. Here it is, for anyone interested:

The Emperor

On a crystalline throne of contextual co-creation, the Emperor
Sits, watching the whirling angels, the rock-opera of his fetish
As feathers and fetters fly off the playa, each art car a fugitive
Simulacra; he doubles down, forges a new body through biotech
And calls it a hymn to Zep Tepi, the first time, a manual for re-creation
Before stepping away from the cameras toward the burning forest.

A flaming hawk, a burst of plumage, plunges into the forest;
Photojournalists with telephoto lenses call: Your Radiance! Emperor! 
He squints, forgets his name at the podium, a glitch in creation;
A hush ripples through handlers who curate his every fetish.
He slips the perimeter, invests his crypto earnings in biotech,
His breath pulsing like a stringless kite, a wandering fugitive.

He remembers when time erupted from duration, a fugitive
Spark leaping from Grails and pyramids, from stone-circle to forest;
He remembers the Empress, his child bride, studying the codes of biotech,
How she wrote him love letters in hieroglyph, addressed simply: Emperor.
He dictates his memoirs to telepathic eunuchs trained in his fetish,
Each page a corridor opening into the furnace of creation.

He counts the ages by ash and bone, then redraws creation
As a spreadsheet of cost-benefit analysis for the fugitive
Self, vitrified and cataloged beneath his favorite fetish
As the rare earth mining company drills beneath the forest.
He raises his sword on the castle wall, recalls his mission as Emperor,
And delights he will soon attain eternal life via biotech.

In cold rooms he watches organs float, a factory of biotech
where his consciousness can slither, doused in creation;
He asks if a saint can be poured like wine into the Emperor,
if a cross can be raised to crucify the fugitive.
The custodian shrugs; outside, rain teaches the metal forest
To rust the edges of every commodified fetish.

He seeks her again—the High Priestess—to unburden his fetish
along seaweed-bitten coves and caves that enter into secret biotech
Wet labs; then inland, where root and rune compile a forest
Grammar older than marble or Logos, older than creation.
He forgets his name; at last he recalls: he is the fugitive
From himself, the crowd, the crown, the fall of Emperor.

Ruined cities still chant for him, Emperor, while VCs fund the latest biotech;
he follows the Empress’s tear-stained map of creation, seeking his fugitive
stretched out on the cross in his fetish gear, towering over the archaic forest.