Game of Cards, for dVerse Poets, Aug 12, 2025

Game of Cards

I would pay a pretty tuppence
to invest in his comeuppance.
His smug assurance, his galling preening.
He’s like a babe in need of weaning,
sucking at the teat of fame.
What other mortal needs his name
written on towers around the world?
He’s Ozymandias, stone lip curled
in cruel splendor, sure in his power
reasserted on every tower.
But remember, as he counts each coup,
how all the mighty have fallen, too.
False knights wear armor prone to tarnish.
His Midas touch will lose its varnish.
We’ll laud the day when he’ll be dumped—
That day when he’ll be over-trumped!

The dVerse prompt is Power.

42 thoughts on “Game of Cards, for dVerse Poets, Aug 12, 2025

  1. Lisa or Li's avatarLisa or Li

    I like the joker image you chose, but its much too good for him. I’ve thought of him as King Joffrey from Game of Thrones and Immortan Trump from Fury Road, but he’s like that little demon from The Witches of Eastwick, a noxious insect once the charm has worn off.

    I love the terms you use in here, and just like a bad case of bleeding hemorrhoids, we’ll all be relieved when he’s gone.

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  2. kim881's avatarkim881

    I like the jaunty rhymes and optimism of your poem, Judy, even if the image of the POTUS ‘like a babe in need of weaning, sucking at the teat of fame’ made me feel queasy. I like the comparison with Ozymandius, ‘stone lip curled in cruel splendor, sure in his power reasserted on every tower’. The mighty all fall eventually.

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    1. lifelessons's avatarlifelessons Post author

      Hi, Kim. Not about to “Truth Social” it. Don’t want to contribute in any manner to that site. And don’t have an X account, either. That said, thanks for your comment and approval!

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      1. lifelessons's avatarlifelessons Post author

        Kim, at your suggestion, I did post it on X and discovered I’d signed up for Twitter 13 years ago and made a link to my blog at that time. Had never really consulted it until now…with the result that 12 years of blog posts began to post.. Not sure if they’d been there all along or if they just posted when I converted to Z but it was rather overwhelming. Over 1,200 postings. Just trying to figure out how to navigate X now. I see many familiar faces and names from WordPress there.

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  3. Pingback: Charles Pierce on Donald Trump | lifelessons – a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown

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