Mad Emperors

Because vanity makes others obscure
cruelty drips from it, it claims innocence,
even ignorance of its own dark deeds,
never dares to account for what it is

a failure of inner nerve in face of fear
and trembling makes for a near complete loss
of the territory that might have been
the estate where self-knowledge could flourish

vanity folds inner devastation 
outward, the ruin it wreaks shows
its true inner disaster from which  it
runs faster and faster going nowhere

mad emperors both perfect and project
vanity's plague, pestilence I, too, host