Grandiosity's Tomb

I don the label of making unnecessary waves

With regularity

As a glorious privilege

Created for me by those who had it far worse

Whose sacrifice enshrined my liberties.

My outspokenness

Has recently been rebuked as

A lack of respect for established authority circling its wagons,

Or provoking the principal who guards school's gate.

I only wish that were the case

For indeed my stance, rather

Reflects my relentlessly high expectations

For leadership as a sacred, but temporary stewardship.

The thorn languishes in my side as it

Remains, just the latest oozing disappointment

From those who choose to purloin their inch of power

In public hierarchies or private bonds.

Somehow I have always known

Such power is fleeting

As it ebbs and resurges, leaving

Today's leader to become tomorrow's flunky.

For those who gauge

Their fatuous purpose

By the measure of obsequiousness

Installed around them

Never know a flicker of confident peace,

As if they too sense that

The perennial denouement of stature

Is ineluctable, eternal dimunition,

Whether through meek retreat or removal by force.

If humility and you

Are not on a first name basis,

Comfortably coexisting in one another's company,

Elevating the testimony of the wronged or disenfranchised

Your crowning eclipse will be an ignominious

Sporting of grandiosity's flimsy disguise.

The shame may fade, but the solitude will not.

Your last breath will leave you in a plaintive

Gasp for rejected ones, who demanded better from you.

Your conceit executes your solitary introduction

To the selfhood you sold so cheaply.