Look upon me, an implacable hand broken on the skulls of assailants,
its serrated stub lashed into bone knives that continue their chip and shatter
as they chip and shatter. I have advanced by destruction: of self and the sphere around me.
I have won my ruin in increments. Look upon my despair, ye workers.
Crown me, at last, Kubilai Khan of Kübler-Ross: nəgus of desperate solitude.
©Tolu Oloruntoba
Notes
This poem takes inspiration from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s 1818 poem, “Ozymandias,” and in some cases (like the title) transforms portions of it.
nəgus is a term for “king,” “emperor,” or “king of kings” in Ethiopian Semitic languages.
I’m trying out OctPoWriMo again this year. There’s a 50% chance I’ll fail to complete it, but let’s see! As an FYI: I plan to make the links to each post private a couple of days after October.
Image credit: © Vyacheslav Argenberg / http://www.vascoplanet.com/, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
