Men are folly in their actions,
Never are they satisfied
With the power placed in their hands
But instead the craving
Rules the ruling

And the thirst for more
Overrules

Lord of men, Agamemnon
Felt not to return Chryseis
The thirst for power
More power
When Agamemnon said to old Chryses
Now go, don't tempt my wrath – and you may depart alive
And so the irrationality
Erupted from his mouth
And the wrong could not be undone

What arrogance it is!
The very same that pools
In the heart of the corrupt
In the heart of the wealthy
In the heart of the powerful

Such was Nestor
To believe just because he had
A few years on Diomedes
He was the wiser, the better of the two
He was overpowered with arrogance
And the lion prided himself over the fox

Such was Agamemnon
To believe himself to be
Greater than you
And the greater man
The craving ruled the ruling

Such was Achilles
He did not fight
And believed those that did
Lacked their potential, because
His helmet was not among theirs
And the army would crumple so

Along with arrogance
In this potpourri of traits
Comes greed
The four-letter word
That led many to the Doors of Death

When the battle continues
Hector eager for more
One day he argues
With wise Polydamas
Polydamas does not pray
For the power that Hector yearns
He is not powerful
He is wise

And the turtle says to
Retreat to Troy
The turtle speaks the wise words
The same that Polydamas suggests
But no
Man-Killing Hector
In his thirst for glory
Tells no forgetting the watch
He says to keep each man wide awake
Everyone agreed
Unaware that
Man-Killing Hector
Was wrong
Athena had after all
Swept away their senses
And all gave applause to
Hector's ruinous tactics
None to Polydamas
Who gave them the sound advice

When Hector
Leapt at Patroclus
Ablaze for glory
Patroclus was not enough, no
So Hector set off for Automedon
To cut him down
And that still was not sufficient, no
So on he went to charge Achilles
And death cut him short

This corruption is not nonexistent
In the powerful today
It still rules the ruling
And the thirst for more
Overrules all

Around came ol' Hitler
During the Second World War
To fight a war, he would not
No, he deemed himself too good
To go out and slaughter a few men
Rather, it was the common soldier
That would die
Paying more tribute to his country
Than Adolf Hitler himself

In the Revolution
That the Texans were outnumbered in
The arrogant Santa Anna charged in
Having no doubt that he would win
Only to find that he had lost

Lord Charles Cornwallis first Marquis
The redcoat with the power
Hundreds of puppets
Under his fingers
Waiting to be used
He was advised, by the lesser as he would say
To move north out of the peninsula
But in his rash, his greed, his arrogance
He stayed and moved back into the peninsula
And all his puppets cried as they were shot
And the show was bought over

Osama bin Laden
Chose to get more
And lived in luxury in his house
Sure that he was too smart to be found
But on the night of May 2
He was shot
His pride wounded

Through the pages of time
The same corruption does not vanish
It stays but in different forms
Much like water
A parasite of its container
And the sands of time
Do nothing but watch