The Madness of Emperors

Suppose your mere existence sickened you,
That human kind appeared the name of greed,
Your horse a god compared to gods you knew,

And suddenly a mercenary crew
Of drunken thugs insisted you succeed
To just the sort of sham that sickened you:

Declared a god on earth, what would you do?
Immediately, approaching at great speed
And pitiless as any god you knew,

The final tick of Time burst into view,
The way appalling beasts burst forth to feed
Upon the circus slave. It sickened you

To think, for all the fawning to ensue,
Soon or sooner you must bawl and bleed
And die, as had the other gods you knew . . .

Glancing at your servile retinue
(Each man’s an emperor in all but deed),
Their smiling flesh and future sickened you.
The time had come to slay what gods you knew.

(C)1996, George Bradley