King of Iron Hearts Read online

  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