Every Modern Ozymandias, Shaya Bock

There are men who think themselves king

Above all. Sitting on a throne

Of gold, and bone, and crushed red velvet

To crinkle democracy

In utter mediocrity, blood

Besmeared about

Under a supple palm.

And within his palm is held

The world, as he sees it.

He will declare our system of measures, judicious

With sword and shield, hammer and nail;

Always a steel to cut any lesser iron.

He imagined a fortress of ivory

Could never weather from the sand-wind,

An emissary to carry his legacy

With whispers and shouts and boasts and legends.

To be remembered

In the marble etchings - all that remain

Beyond the breadth of a mortal life-

Beyond the fate of many a king;

Damned to irrelevance

In their pursuit of eternal clout.

He would rather die than be forgotten.

To calm his obsessions

Of foolish successors

And would-be assassins,

He switched out gold gloves for red.

He models the frown, and wrinkled lip,

And the sneer of cold command,

And when his empire falls -

Oh what a spectacular fall! -

What little could remain for such an empire

As what remained for Ozymandias.

* * *

He knows the frailty of a man’s body -

The frailty of his body -

He knows the twigs

And the ease with which they snap,

But nonetheless, his dynasty will prevail.

The fate of lesser gods and once great men

Is bound to that of sword and shield.

He knows not that the truest godhood is never birthed

In a mere moment of triumph, but rather sowed

In the seed of the many, to be reaped

And harvested by the hopeful

And again sown

And again reaped

And again, and again.

But it is the lesser men -

Those most forgotten men -

Who carry any legacy of great-hood

In the folds of their scars and their keloid lashed skin,

With each blistered step, speak the name of

His Majesty’s benevolent malevolence.