Legend, Literature, Nature

Ozymandias

PB Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

life, Love, Nature

Prophecy

  • Cups of sooty coffee

criss-cross darkening  stains

on Chinese porcelain, 

echoing a prophecy 

of a Turkish soothsayer, 

a destiny embossed on 

those parched cracks 

between the folds of 

the mandarin  cup, a topaz

vision, may be a hallucination 

or myriad psychedelics at

work a Bedouin  on a caravan

gilding on golden  dunes, 

a nomadic predicament 

a home neither here

nor there!