In The Court Of King Friday
A Poem by Lee Seigel
In The Court Of King Friday
The times you fight best are when backed into a corner with dirty hands and aching feet, your teeth bared, licking blood from your lips. They swing high but you dodge artfully, a pirouette in the alley moonlight;
made possible by viewers like you.
This is love-letter to you, Fred, as I wake up from a nap to Jacques julienning a dozen potatoes, steel glinting under the hot TV lights, this is where we learn
our justice.
My gut says to rage and lunge for the throat of the beast
that would deprive us of Julia’s heavenly Bourguignon-
but You (loving me just the way I am) would not want that, and to disappoint that face, young in the ‘60s, making Congress cry, would be the most grievous of sins.
If only I could stop, but with everything on the line,
how can I pledge anything less?
There is something deep inside, clawing hot
up the back of the throat, rancid tasting, full of bile and wrath and tears,
a ruinous fury that anyone would take you away, out of spite and pettiness and for no other reason than because they can.
Where are the helpers you promised? Because I don’t want to stop, I want to fight to save it all for you, and Julia, and Bob, with his happy little trees.
I want those monsters to hurt, the fiends who would burn your legacy to the ground and dance in the ashes, soot-stained suits billowing in the breeze.
I cannot stop, I need to fight, and may become unlovely, though with love in my heart.
Would you still be mine?
Lee Seigel is a fundraising, operations, and I.T. professional, who pursues his passions for travel, photography, and poetry, often all at once. He is the author of the collection, A Season or So, and was the Heidi Knecht Memorial Award winner at the 2022 Ohio Poetry Day Competition. Originally from Long Island, New York, he now lives in Ohio with his wife, son, and spoiled cats.
