It ain’t heavy it’s my boulder
One must imagine Sisyphus’s
boulder, marble-sized these days
And Ozymandias’ plaque,
spinning despair into praise
Look on, ye hypocrites,
and sneer at my undoing
Your universe is a giant sandpit,
entropy accruing
Their legacies long crumbled,
eroded by rust
Gods built the wrong way,
on scaffolds of dust
Virtue or vice register
equally the same
Except between stars,
there’s space for one more grain
Down here, we clock in daily,
stack hours like prayer
Worship strong Wi-Fi,
evangelize on thin air
Imagine heavenly echoes,
because the silence isn’t fair
Some develop connection,
others a thousand-yard stare
Our Earth splits naturally,
along seismic lines
Greenwich claims centre stage,
only for the meantime
Sisyphus, still aching,
gets an epidural at last
But only in hindsight,
for his hump blocks the past
Redrawn are our own lines,
watchtowers in the sand
Sketching new borders,
carving up the promised land
Exhume ancient treasure,
and black, viscous stuff
Addicted to all things buried,
as if our dead weren’t enough
Still we write blindly,
tracing glyphs already faded
Helps lift the mood
when depressed and jaded
Gods stand on shaky ground,
myth holds them together
In schisms that bind billions,
then sever forever
Oh, look on—ye poet
Sisyphus now rolls his eyes
He’s seen the apps, wars,
hoodies, and cable ties
His hamster wheel’s a meme
for gods who merely try
Small wonder he mutters,
at least Ozymandias gets to die
And sometimes I pray to gods,
or maybe their ghosts
About versions of me
I’ve been missing the most
They don’t directly answer,
but do leave this guess
In the end, to keep on rolling
may be my passing success
By David Kavanagh
Copyright ©
David Kavanagh
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