1. HEADLESS

Hear and take heed:
A folk malign,
A folk baleful and crude:
What touched is consumed.

Rubbing their hands
In greed and hunger
For this thing alone:
A fullscale reduction to bone.

Look as they flee:
Their gait and their mien
Betraying
What had e’er been foreseen.

Sickened since birth,
A multitude of stooping swine
Without merit for worth.

Fools are they we name
(Headless!).
They fall at our feet!

“Tyrants,” they so cry.
(Headless!)
Comeuppance complete.

They crawl through their grime.
(Headless!)
We’ll know no defeat.

Again, yea, hear their name:

Headless!
Headless!
Headless!
Headless!

Opulence, this?
Is this how you name your
Spoils bellicose
Won from afar?

‘One thousand more,
Just two ten thousands more,’
Hissed th’outlander
O’er the two forks of his tongue.

Hear and take heed:
A folk malign,
A folk baleful and crude:
What touched is consumed.

Rubbing their hands
For this thing alone:
A fullscale reduction to bone.

Fools are they we name
(Headless!).
They fall at our feet!

“Tyrants,” they so cry.
(Headless!)
Comeuppance complete.

They crawl through their grime.
(Headless!)
We’ll know no defeat.

A people pushed too far
Shall not balk at the southern star’s
Beckoning!

A clan with roots so old
Shall not leave with a simple threat of
‘Reckoning!’

Again yea hear their names:

Headless!
Headless!
Headless!
Headless!