Bard Billot on the blue Baron
The Baron Who Would Be King
King Luxon and Toad Seymour stroll along
In the sweet sunshine of victory.
The sixteen lane motorway to The Bright Future
Stretches out before them into the distance.
A chain gang of red stickered bottom feeders
Is hard at work cleaning up after last night’s big celebration.
“I won,” says the former Baron.
“Yes we did,” croaks the Toad that sits on his shoulder.
They stroll past some smoking wreckage scattered
At the side of the Great Motorway.
“Morning fellows!” says a scorched looking hobo,
Sitting on the kerb with a dazed expression.
“Morning, Chippy,” answer the travelling duo.
“Hard to believe he was King once,”
Whispers King Luxon, shaking his head.
Behind them a spectral apparition
Starts drifting along companionably.
They ignore the Ancient Ghost of Lord Winston
But his eerie haunting makes them uncomfortable.
They wade through an aromatic stream
Of fast flowing dairy effluent.
“Well, you can’t stop progress,” says the King.
“Too right O Majesty,” answers the Toad in his fresh gumboots.
The afternoon grows longer.
Off to side of the Great Sixteen Lane Motorway
Fires are burning and there is the sound of explosions.
A gang of ram raiders scream past in the wrong lane,
Partying up on their fat wheeled trail bikes
“Stop that!” shouts the King in annoyance.
“Who are they anyway?” he asks the Toad.
“They are the Mega Landlords O King,”
Replies the Loyal Toad.
King Luxon consults his in-flight video
On 21st Century End Times Corporate Leadership
But the noise of the trail bikes and explosions
Drowns out the reassuring drone of cliché.
The wind grows stronger yet.
Tall dark waves are rising over the concrete lanes
Of the Great Motorway To The Future.
Refugees stream past him in the opposite direction
Fleeing from The Bright Future up ahead.
“Go back, you fool,” cries a passing soul,
“There is nothing up there!”
In a desperate last measure,
King Luxon consults his moral compass,
But it swings wildly in meaningless circles.
He stops and stands in the middle of the vastness
Of the Submerging and Windswept Motorway
To the Bright Future,
Clasping his tinsel crown in both hands.
Up ahead is nothing but darkness,
And the howling of the cyclone grows louder yet.
The Toad has vanished into the night.
The King is alone.
“But I won,” he murmurs to himself in surprise.
Victor Billot has previously written Odes for Prime Ministers Chris Hipkins and Jacinda Ardern.
