A. Gee Where words collide

Poems

Of Ducks and Kings

I stare at them: which one will try and take
What otherwise might never grace their head
Which one thinks that he'd rather rule instead
This pack of jackals waits for a mistake

Who fantasizes, covets my new wife
Does she encourage one of them to mount
Is it the duke, the baron, or the count
The thought of it does make me clench my knife

I know the duke keeps writing to the Pope
The baron, to his uncle in Calais
The count is patient, waiting to make hay
I mustn’t give them, not a shred of hope

At last the kitchens serve a roasted duck
I raise a glass, I must make the first toast
“Well met, my sons, and now, do try this roast!
As you can see, no feathers left to pluck”

I stare at them: which one will try and take
What otherwise might never grace their head
My boys take after me, that’s what I dread
And I’ve learned all I could from dad’s mistake

Author notes: https://allpoetry.com/contest/2782522-Heroic-Fantasy-195

Empathy

What’s Hecuba to me, indeed
I too have sat, unmoved
As those who’re closest to me bleed
In fact I have approved
Their suffering seems to ignite
In me a latent vice
The very nature of their plight
Adding a certain spice
The poet’s words are like a shard
A sharp, reflective glass
The portraits are forever scarred
Absorbed in their morass
The tears flow freely, stranger still
I do not wish them dry
Perhaps they’ll rid me of this chill
Perhaps, I know not why

Author notes: The passage from Hamlet: Is it not monstrous that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his whole conceit That, from her working, all the visage warmed, Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing, For Hecuba! What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her? What would he do Had he the motive and the cue for passion That I have? He would drown the stage with tears,

Shakespeare in a Box

Oh, Shakespeare, may your works forever charm
Attracting lovers through both time and space.
The ones that read your sonnets, arm in arm
And those that pepper writings with your lace.

Could some AI, a future distant still
Acquire your ability with words?
And generate, with its robotic quill
Words flying off the page like courting birds?

I can’t decide if we would laugh or cry
Would such a talent drive us to despair?
To find out a machine, we know not why
Can be your sole inheritor, your heir?

I do not know, but I do surely hope
if it comes close it's not a misanthrope

Author notes: Elizabethan sonnet https://allpoetry.com/contest/2783325-The-Purveyors-of-Medieval-Prosody---When-I-