Ambition


from the ABC set Poetry

All those bodies left in fields
blood seeping, soaking deep
like rain into the thirsty ground.

I thought I knew then.

I thought, I believed
I was there to wear the holy crown,
But I was no real king,
only ever really the fool.

Ambition gnaws away at the insides,
turns others into ciphers
for the yearned-for end.

I have no ambition left.

It is long gone, seeping into the ground
like the fresh blood of a young fool
who believed in all the visions,
who followed an older, but no wiser, fool

And for what?
For ambition? For glory?
And what is glory?

Peacock's feathers.

Discuss this piece in the abctales forum