The Colossus of Snide
by James O’Brien
Feet planted on pilings too small to bear the weight,
The sunken god fell, contradicted by the elements,
The mournful plaintiff soon vanquished a heresy,
A coddling joke left half distilled like an ethanol drip,
Too paltry for reverie, too insipid for debauch.
How your works mock you, Jokerman, a lost cabal,
A grievous haunting, you ratted out the denizens in bronze,
It was pained plaster painted, crumbling to the touch,
Dissolved in water, a sickly paste of deceit,
Like the stench of cheese rot riddled with vivid decay.
Helios humiliated by the Wizard of Oz.
A vast, seething emptiness silted up the harbour,
The lying, vacuous clown, cried love me for my works,
Tinkers removed an alloy of scrap. Nada. Nada. Nada.
