Power: Thy Will Be Done Poem by Olumide Omoyele

Intoxication.
Manipulation.
Compulsion.
The ability to compel…to have
one's will be done
Surely the most intoxicating of
substances, a thing that
manipulates the mind, elevating
it to the altitude of alterations.

Was it not Power's insistence
on abuse that drove that noble
English king the eight of the
title of Henry to clamour for heads?

Have subsequent would-be-kings
not succumbed to the same unquenchable
stench of the Need to compel?

(The insatiability of invincibility
or the invincibility of insatiability?)

Did the ailment, incurable as it is,
not afflict the second Bush of
the recipient of the statue that
Liberty proclaims (but only in words) , just as easily
as it did Abacha in that
melting pot of the Federal Republic?

Do I tell an untruth when I imagine
that its hallucinogenic effects afflict
policemen just as it does the bishop
of Rome?

Are the wielders of this heavy a thing
not as much victims as the heads on
which the axe befall?
Are tyrant kings any less deserving
of our pity than the harshly punished?

Who is to blame then for Power's folly?
you may point accusing fingers
at the Weakness of Man... and yet
the books wherein history is produced
tell us of Aurelius, that truly noble
Roman king... a just and loved ruler
was he?

Is the human adorned only with
the Power to respond
to the station laid out by fate?
with Power only to embrace servitude or rulership
depending on the wind's direction?

Many questions.Enough to intoxicate
and manipulate the mind.

Yet, compulsion's secrets
remain a painful mystery.
So does the burden of the Power
to have thy will be done.