the devil's advocate

vi. sword of damocles

when
night swallowed the sun
he found himself back at wiltshire:
       a corrosive ancestral house
       a heritage from an absent father
       whose face he barely remembered

he asked
the portraits of great-grandfathers
   all emperors have narrow-minds,
   don't they?
   i doubt they have ever seen
               the face of an enemy
  its similar scars and wrinkles
  its equals ambitions and fears
  its twin tears,
           as mournful as their own
   i doubt they have seen the enemies
                      and acknowledged them
                      as humans

his ideology
was a monumental temple
                         made of mud
                               and blood
                      (as red as his own)

as the devil told its tale
                   in defense of the innocent
and the truth arose within the wine
lucius had faced his own dilema:

two souls in the darkness
they can't see anything
         except each other
                                   (that must be love)
they might not like what they see
            but they notice each other
                   understand each other
                             accept each other
                                          in the shadows.
               and that,
               for the lack of a better word
                                must be called love.

(he drowned his doubts in wine)

jessamine palmer
is a filthy mud-blood
the silver moon mumbled
      the blasphemous curse
      that kept him up all night

lucius malfoy was putrid pride
and a resentment that wasn't his own
           but something he had inherited
                          along with the surname

his father had raised him
sword of damocles in hand,
mud-bloods are less than us
         they shouldn't be allowed here
         they shouldn't be allowed to live
  and young lucius had agreed:
         we should burn them all alive
         like they murdered our ancestors
with childish interest;
         his father had been so proud

the words of a fool
     he realised now

vain peacocks curiously admired
       the lord of the labyrinth
walking through purgatorio
                following the moon
                and the sweet wine
and finding jessamine's deific face
                      in every marble statue
        (velvet rain drawing her tears)

he loathed jessamine stubbornly
  and had often wished her death;
         an spoiled child unable to admit
                      the truths he had omitted
                 (since the beginning)

lucius  liked jessamine
good God,  have mercy
he was attracted to her

like devils adore
those who defend them

jessamine palmer was:
             the only person
he wasn't supposed to like
      (mud-blood, dirty blood)
             the only person
lucius was oddly unsurprised
to find himself truly liking

after all
his name only meant light
             when it left her lips
                                        (oh, lucius)

he had listened to her tragedy
that had taken place another april
                     not kinder than the last
she had laughed at gilded butterflies
             tears like pearls
             down her cheeks
since the beasts
           (lucifer, cain, judas)
that almost murdered her
               didn't understand:
               an eye for an eye
and the world ends up blind

(when they burned the witch
they admitted she was their equal)

among all those portraits of vanity
he found one made of melted silver
its expression mimicking his own,
as narcissus
     he looked at his reflection
     and asked jessamine's last question
     to the last tyrant standing;
     how much must we hate ourselves
            to desire the death of someone
            who is so much like us?

despite all his father's lessons
lucius had no answer for the devil
                      he found in the mirror