Notes on our poem about The Donald, “Ozymandias”
The poem to be published began with the apocalyptic dreams brought upon me by tension between the US and North Korea. It began as a song for the third album, but its scale exceeded our current resources, so I finished it currently as three-part-and-epilogue epic. The only recurring nightmare I’ve had in my life has been of nuclear holocaust, which lead to becoming inevitably inspired by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s “Watchmen.” I’ve been a fan of the graphic novel since I was 13, and one of the movies which I’ve been most excited to see in all my nerdy life (and I did hard time waiting for pictures like Avengers and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice -which is still a dumb fucking title-) has been the Zack Snyder adaptation. The only time I’ve been kicked out of a theater was with my dad because he snuck me in to see it and I was too young.
It is both exciting as a fan and profoundly terrifying as a person very much against being incinerated how relevant the book has become in recent times. The excellent TV sequel by Damon Lindelof concluded just three days before impeachment, and the also great and just as sacrilegious comic-book continuation “Doomsday Clock” by Geoff Johns (which I started presciently reading right around before the Mueller fiasco) had its twelfth and last issue published in eerie fashion just yesterday (December 18th, 2019 if you are reading this in the future or past, wink).
Other inspirations include “Oldboy” (for yucky reasons), CNN, Bob Woodward’s “Fear: Trump in the White House,” Ava DuVernay’s “13th,” Lovecraft, “Akira,” Stephen Colbert & SNL, Gerard Way’s first volume of “Umbrella Academy,” Percy Bysshe Shelley & Horace Smith, Stephen King, and Humpty Dumpty.
Our take on the big O is a story about the King of the World, a deranged ruler who was not ousted, conquered the four corners unbridled, and came down eventually under the weight of his own hubris.
He also married his daughter and fathered mutant kids with her in the radioactive winter wasteland.
Yep…
I hope you find it funny; I hope you find it sad. This is for all Mexican people who have been hindered by The Donald.
This is…
OZYMANDIAS.
