The Death of a Despot

The day of reckoning arrived.

The Death of a Despot

 

By Elton Camp

 

Eternal vigilance is said to be the price of liberty

It’s also the price of despotism as we just did see

 

Eventually, even ones a dictator does bully or hire

Get their fill and against him they will conspire

 

He who lives in such luxury and power on one day

May suddenly find his life has moved another way

 

Neither fancy cars nor the most elegant of palace

Help when he must drink from the poisoned chalice

 

The despot flees to his hometown for his protection

Thinking there he will prove able to avoid detection

 

When the avengers come about to pound on his door

He desperately tries to escape the fate he does abhor

 

So many others he has killed without any pity at all

It’s different when on him the Grim Reaper does call

 

His caravan is attacked as it sweeps grandly along

The despot shouts, “What’s wrong?  What’s wrong?”

 

Into a concrete pipe underneath the road he will dive

In a last-ditch effort that he might somehow stay alive

 

“Don’t shoot me, my sons,” he does fearfully cry

But it is on that dreaded day he finds he must die

 

Perhaps the wisest ancient writings he should have read

It tells the killer it is by man that his blood will be shed