A fond memory of my youth was the enchantment I felt upon first reading Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” a sonnet about a ruined colossus in the desert that had been erected by a vainglorious despot of antiquity. I later learned there was a second “Ozymandias” composed by Horace Smith, the product of a friendly sonnet writing contest between the two men. After describing the ruined colossus, Smith ponders whether people of the future might view the ruins of a destroyed and deserted London with similar wonder.

I had entertained the idea of producing something in a similar vein if sufficiently inspired by suitable subject material, and the opportunity eventually presented itself. I elected to compose my sonnet in blank verse, fourteen lines, ten syllables per line, stressed syllables following and alternating with unstressed syllables. The setting would be a distant, dystopian future like something right out of Planet of the Apes. I selected tentative venues for submission that I thought would be amenable to provocative, cutting-edge fare, but alas, my submissions languished. I then thought of a venue among whose readership were the kind of literati with whom my piece would most certainly resonate. So without further ado:

George Floyd’s Head

The glacier in retreat left in its wake
Upon the muddy flats a giant head
Amidst the rubble of a city there
That once was grand but now is dead and gone.
Approaching remnants stop and wonder who
The visage represents who merits such
Acclaim to take on such colossal form.
It must have been a man of much renown—
An icon of some potentate just like
Those Olmec heads from even older times!
From on its side they set it up erect
And bend their knees before its pensive gaze;
Respect is due to such a one revered
So much by peers who made his greatness known.