Zeus Gets Lazy Too

So he got the Cyclops to forge him a new zapper
The Electric Tennis Racket
The Catch-All Bug Annihilator
Dispense divine judgment in one fell sweep

*Hold down the button for full charge*
No need to aim or throw
A single haphazard swing
Send the mortals to be his brother’s problem en masse

He just keeps a list of em’ now
so he can take them all out at once
one day…
Well, he’s keeping track in his head

He too knows he’s grown fat and weak
His old javelins are too heavy
The once sharp points of his shimmering bolts
cartoonishly dulled and rounded into bulbous domes
None of them resemble his notorious stinger  

But who questions the king?
They keep making chiseled statues
 to replace the derelict and decayed
Each a painful reminder of his fleeting vigor
another stone to pass

Who would dare reflect his modern form?
With all his ugly, bloated proportions
It stung his pride to know
no man could afford enough marble

Who could spur his sedentary spirit?
His “bitchy wife” perhaps,
who still spars with the only muscular part of his body left
His tongue a restless wyrm,
a squirming reminder of his virile past…

“Unloving witch”

He still fences his heart with a parlance of whittled phrase
busy flashing insult after insult
left with no threat but that of his office

Unlike most poor husbands
he need not mutter his retorts in bated breath
For his throne remains unchallenged
and her stones were always cast for free

Mind deafened by insecurity
Ears blind to our prayers
He was used to parrying her accusations
but not fending off eternity’s toll

He would sooner inhabit a painted world
where his humors are better masked
Hung display, young forever
before ever addressing the hypocrisies that frames them

At least,
it would be less embarrassing this way
If Gods can’t die
and all men fade.