Dying king by Matthew M.C. Smith

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Dying king 

I am with you. I am always with you. 

You pulse with the click of the drive. 
The dying king.  

I press your paper-thin 
shroud of skin, as thumbs curl  

over balsa bones, ridges royal. 
My eyes probe famine’s faultlines,

scan this lucent husk, 
your twilight mask. 

Under your arm, 
now thin, translucent, I once slept, 
 
sheltered from terrors in the night.  
Now, I keep watch. How did it come to this?

Morphine dulls your silent ward. It keeps you 
from fires in the fields, 

from the sibilant hiss of the underworld,
the gaping maw of night. 

We are skin, my dark  
follows your dark.
                       *
Above tides, I feel winds of unconquerable spirit. 
I stand at the edge, choking with loss. 

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Matthew M.C. Smith is a Welsh poet. He writes a lot of poems about his late father, Michael. Matthew's poetry is published in Fevers of the Mind, Seventh Quarry and Re-side. He is at Twitter @MatthewMCSmith facebook: @MattMCSmith and is the editor of micropoetry press @BlackBoughpoems