Poetry | Louis xvi
Louis xvi
© 2017, 2021 Vernon Miles Kerr
There’s smugness in those
With absolute power,
A blindness to history,
Unwarranted ego:
“I’m so unique and great
I’ll be the first to avoid that fate.”
Louie’s wife said “No bread?
Then call for cake,”
More in ignorance than disdain,
But later saw the torches coming
Out her leaded window pane.
The elastic can only stretch so far
Before always snapping back.
It’s a law of Nature more resolute
Than Newton’s apple-smack.
We First-Worlders tout Democracy,
And some of us smugly laugh
At strutting tonsured despots
Who hurl pathetic threats
From behind the parapets
Of tiny, impotent realms,
While we—oblivious—are strung
Like marionettes, to a devious despot
Far more to be feared
Than a Louie, Adolph or Kim Jong-un,
Who has captured the Gates
Of Medicine, of Sustenance, of Fuel,
And now — even Governance,
Who exacts a toll when we pass through,
Which we naively pay in gratitude
As our purchases assuage our certitude.
He’s a puppet-master of our own making,
A Frankenstein’s Monster, stitched from
Parts of a cadaverous economic order,
Yet walking, but streaming a gagging stench—
Presaging death—behind.
The elastic can only stretch so far,
Before always snapping back.
Louie was downed by a starving rabble,
Powered by the Grapevine,
But be encouraged:
Today’s monstrous ruler shall be
Hanged from a virtual yardarm
By a connected, savvy rabble,
Powered by the Internet.