Editor’s Note: Samuel Thomas Nichols tells us that, “When my niece graduated from high school this past year her announcement indicated that she desired to become ‘the omnipotent ruler of an alternate universe.’ It gave us a laugh but I also realized that we writers are indeed omnipotent rulers of the universes we create. Hence the following was inspired.
Ruler of Rules
By Samuel Thomas Nichols, Inland Empire Branch
I, the omnipotent ruler
Of an alternate universe
Decide the fate of my people
With efforts from a fashioned reed
That sweats blood and bleeds rarest inks
Born in the midst of despair
Where prim and prop do propagate
The vastness of an open page
Through premise, plot, and circumstance
Until the rivers overflow
The weak dams of hesitation
And they that doeth all I bid
May live in anticipation
Or die from asphyxiation
Beneath a rose or in a cloud
It does not matter how they fare
Their allegiance will never wane
For they love me as I do them
It’s no matter to live or die
To question where or when or why
As they remain in life or death
Creations of my word and breath
I bred to give them life and pain
And to them all I gave a name
That may be known or left unsaid
Between the spaces on the page
Where I triumph o’er my own worlds
Within the universe I keep
My own image on face and deed
For if it happened here you’ll know
It happened in that life below
For nothings said not said before
And nothing done not done before
But we’ll invent a color here
To cloak it in some new disguise
And we’ll inject a thought in there
That fell from time and space unknown
Behind the darkness of nowhere
Where all doth live and all doth die
In my time here between the naughts
That bookcase all reality
Where His creations live with mine
In altered universe of sight,
Sound, touch, and of pure illusion
A parlor trick that knowest not
Of life, and death, and in-betweens
I, the omnipotent ruler
Of this alternate universe
Do control all things in time
Between the bookends of the naught.
Read more at samuelthomasnichols.com.