Grandiosity's Tomb
Updated: Jan 28, 2021

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.
