KING OF IRON HEARTS
A collection of poems by Giana Darling
Writing as King Kyle Garro
Copyright ©2020 Giana Darling
Published by Giana Darling
Illustrations by Ali Silver
Edited by Jenny Sims
Cover Design by Jay Aheer
Book design by Inkstain Design Studio
This Book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This Book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
To all the women waiting for the man of their dreams.
And to the men patient enough to earn them.
The King of Iron Hearts
Is a fable now
A tale they tell children
About a man made of metal
Whose heart burned so boldly
It melted him from the inside out
1
Wild Card (King)
2
house of Cards (KING)
3
UP THE ANTE (KING)
4
BLEEDING HEARTS (KING)
5
WIDOW (CRESSIDA)
Acknowledgments
More Books by Giana Darling
About the Author
Welcome to the Dark Side
Where the good go bad
And the only lessons they teach
Are those in corruption
The devil is a gentleman
How else do you think
He lured all those
Sinning souls
To hell?
People don’t talk enough about devils
With their silver tongues
How the greatest sin they commit
Is that thing they do
With their precious metal mouths
I was born to the demons that hounded me.
They wanted my submission to their corruption like blood ink on paper signed with my name.
I could have run,
But where is the power in that?
Instead, I became a demon myself in order to master them all.
Own your demons.
The devil wasn’t horns and talons
Brimstone and ash.
He was golden and gorgeous
Sinning and sex.
And I was his latest victim.
My mother thought I was a waste of space
In her womb
And the thought didn’t improve when I was born.
My father thought I was a prince and raised me to be
King.
He had faith in everything I did.
My best friend didn’t speak with words
But everything he ever told me
With his eyes and his actions
Taught me I was worthy of love.
My sister told me once that our mother
Educated her in self-hatred
And steeped her deep in eternal doubt
Because if a mother can’t love her child
Doesn’t that make her right?
Why is it that the negative words of one
Can so easily outweigh the good of every other?
A lion will never be a pet.
You can put a collar on it,
Lock it up at night,
And call it pretty as much as you
Want.
But the real animal is you,
For caging something that was meant to be
Free.
Break up with your boyfriend.
My father taught me with his fists
My mother with her heavy sighs
My uncle took me to church
Where he taught me everything I should despise
My father hit me to keep me silent
My mother didn’t notice he was violent
My uncle made me one of the choir boys
Whom I discovered were all his toys
What happens when you are told to respect your elders, but they never show any respect for you?
Sometimes there is a two-way mirror
Between you
And the rest.
Every day you watch the others live their lives
Talk, laugh, and touch
A unit
A family
An entire world
But
Behind the glass
You are alone
Always
Acutely unseen.
Family isn’t in the blood
It’s the echo of each name
That sounds with the beat of your heart.
Brother,
You will never truly die
Because
Brother,
I wear your friendship on my vest
Like a badge
Brother,
When you went
I thought about going with you
But brother,
I knew you wouldn’t want me
Brother,
I knew wherever you were
Heaven, Hell, or Valhalla
You were saving me a seat beside you
When the time came for me to join you
Brotherhood
Is made by blood, sweat, and spit
Forged in the fire of shared adversity
Strong as titanium
Common as iron
Man-made
An awkward hug that lasts too long
A secret handshake full of history
A ride side by side connected by the wind
Man-held
the respect of brothers
the tightly knotted weave of friendship
something more than family
something beautiful that only exists between
Man to man
It’s the balance she craves.
The soft core under immovable steel
The rough against the slide of silk skin
The coarse voice speaking in dulcet tones
A woman wants a man like a weapon
That could never be turned against her
One only she can wield
When she needs that strength to be her sword
And his love her shield
I just like being bad
The guy people don’t get
The one they want to fuck
The one they don’t want to fight
And the one you just can’t kill
I just like being bad
A man with the road beneath his bike
And the taste of whiskey on his breath
The one who kisses like he brawls
Who walks with a ‘I gotta secret’ kinda swagger
I just like being bad
But more than that, I like being bad for you
My good girl with a taste for something wild
You can suck the danger from my lips
While I keep you safe in my arms
Because no one fucks with you
Not even me
How the bad boy gets the girl.
I’ve been a cowboy my whole life
Workin’ to wrangle
A soul so wild
It bucks against the red ropes that bind it
Knocks into the bone bars that cage it
I’ve been keepin’ it steady for so many years
Just waitin’ for you to walk on by
And bring it to heel with the swish of your h
air
And the sight of your smile.
Behind her ears
The gentle slope of her neck
The underside of her jaw
I want to know how she tastes
But I am already convinced
She tastes like cherries
There was nothing gentle in her beauty
Nothing soft or romantic
She was an exclamation mark
The study of her exquisiteness punctuated by
A punch to the solar plexus
A different kind of pretty.
Sometimes a wild soul
Doesn’t yearn for open fields
It wants strong hands and stern words
To break under hard rules
Until the restless chaos in their hearts is soothed
Their loud spirit is quiet
And for a moment, blissfully at peace.
The art of Domination and submission.
Sometimes I catch my daughter watching the animal channel, her hands curled into claws and her lips pulled back to reveal tiny teeth. She growls sometimes, but nothing prepares me for the eventual ferocity of her roar.
When I ask her what she’s doing, she breaks character to smile and say, “I’m learning how to be like mummy, fierce and loyal, strong and beautiful in a way that people respect.”
“I want to be Queen of the jungle.”
A man should show strength
Power in his veins like burning live wires
Crackled intensity inside his gaze
Spiralling up the rod of steel in his spine
But
There are tears in my ducts
Caught in the velvet pink like jewels
They gleam
Betraying me
My spine wilts
Metal melting in the firestorm
Of my flaming heart
That burns
Like some eternal torch
Stronger than my manliness
More powerful than my might
It wrecks me weak from the inside out
Machismo
Dirt in my boots
Ink on my hands and a bike
Thrum
Humming between my legs
Bad boy
Sinner
Future criminal
But I have love on the brain
And stars in my eyes my father pulled
From the sky just for me
I have words on my tongue
That gather like pearls
And when I speak
It’s in jeweled prose
Are my gems precious enough for you?
Even with mud on my face and iron in my blood.
I may be a rebel, but I’m one with a cause.
And that cause is you.
I have an insatiable appetite for destruction
An incurable need for a simple view
To fracture like a kaleidoscope
Into so much colour
So many shapes
Until what once was
Is now so much more
Pretty boy
They all want you
The girls with dips and curves
For hand holds
The thin young things with
Eager lips
All the women see a man
Tall, dark, and handsome
With an edge
Drawn in ink on his skin
And they want you
Pretty boy
You collect them all
The reds, the blondes
And the mahogany haired
Like notches on your belt
But the one girl who sees
The chemistry of your plastic smile
And the depth of your hollow gaze
The one girl who sees more than just
A pretty boy
You keep her far away
I may be mute
Because I do not have the words
To express the depthless font of feelings
In my dark and twisted heart
But do not assume
That makes me blind as well
I was mute
In class
Silent
At parties
So quiet in my throat
It spread like a virus into my lungs
Over my skin and hair
Until it was a physical thing
Invisibility
Yet
You noticed me
And your voice
It outlined my edges
Filled in my blanks with colours
You
You noticed me
And in the beauty of that regard
I found my voice
Because I needed one to describe
The wet blue velvet in your eyes
And the thin skin where your thigh meets
Your groin that is sweet and velvet as a bruised peach
I learned
To speak with words
That could only be heard
With my lips pressed to your flesh
“I’m a storm,” you said.
“Gale force winds and pelting rains
Sudden explosions of noise and wet
So much thunder
You roar
You cannot contain me
I cannot be yours.”
But I am a storm chaser
Hurricane watcher
I don’t need to catch you to claim you
I only need to respect you to love you.
Why is there no sympathy for the devil?
He who sits in irons bound to a dark throne
In a kingdom filled with hate and loss
Stinking of brimstone
He who has the company of demons and sinners
Who rules over an endless growing domain
That echoes with wraith’s pitiful moans and wails
Why is there no sympathy for the immortal man
Who paid for the simple sin of pride
With an eternity of ruling restless souls
That will never love his own?
Definition:
A plan or purpose with an unstable structure the could be destroyed easily.
There is so much poetry in devastation
In the monumental destruction of things
Of ancient pyramids falling broken in the sands
Of grand empires fracturing into modern states
Some things break beyond compare
But there is worth to be found in the archeology
Of those ruins
Everything lost is not forgotten.
Why is it
That you hurt me so bad
And the only person I want
To comfort me
Is you?
Have you considered
That is was Dr. Frankenstein who was
The real monster?
We are the product of our circumstances.
Why is a monster a monster?
Because it doesn’t know how to retract its claws.
I am old sorrow
Ancient tears that have dried on the shore
Between the creases of each rock like sad diamonds
Barely winking in the cloud filtered light.
I am withered dreams
Empty husks dashed upon dry soil
That has yet to be tilled
A fallow moment in time
Momentarily forgotten.
I am fossilized heartbreak
Whorls of my fractured soul
Trapped in hardened fragments of soil
Compressed by time
For other people to find and study
That they might learn from my mistakes.
How can ‘what if’
Feel like a war wound
From a battle you forgot you fought
A limb you never really lost
That feels as though it’s gone
She walked by me
So many times
Wit
hout seeing me
But I saw her
So many times
Without even looking
She was etched onto my lids
Scent punctured through my nostrils
Voice looped through my head like a song
I was branded by the sight of her
While she…
She didn’t even know my name.
The greatest tragedy
Of unrequited love
Is knowing
You have an expensive gift to give
That will never be received
No matter how charmingly you wrap it
Or how often you lay it at their door
It will remain forever unopened
Unwanted
And insecure.
We are sorry to inform you that your application has been denied.
To all the girls with their heads in the clouds
Don’t forget to draw down the dream you wish there
Like a balloon pulled from the sky
And carry it with you while
You walk down the street
So you might notice me finally when I find you there