Empire

We seek the sweet fruition of an earthly crown! (2)
To hang on our sepulcher, as we rot in the ground.
Burn the bodies!
Tear them limb from limb!
Catalogue the categories of our self destruction.
Willful men with nefarious minds
Slaughter in the wake of self-advancement
Progress at the cost of generations
The untold stories of the countless breaths we've ceased
Unbridled manifestations of ruinous self-perpetuation derived from desolate minds
We answer only to ourselves
We are the gods of our own existence.
Sworn to none but our own pursuits.
We will reach the pinnacle of grandeur
On a pyramid of bodies! (3)
Distorting perception
Rhetoric from the serpent's tongue
The art of oppression
Destruction from the tyrant's lungs
The princes of a kingdom built on death.
Fashioned from the bones of lowly men.
Send them to their graves
With the words of a tyrant
We are the incarnation of death
Footnotes:
(1) The reference here is to the struggle for dominance and truth in a society forged by the dichotomy between rule of law and exceptionalism as depicted in Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee.
(2) Tamburlaine; Marlowe
(3) Waiting for the barbarians