The leaders we need

The gerontocracy Chuck Schumer rules
perceives Mamdani as a foreign threat.
A real Progressive, not big donors' tool,
he rides a groundswell money can't deflect.
The Gilded Age McKinley thought was swell
ignored the squalor of the greater mass,
as if the Workers, in their urban Hell
were all beholden to the ruling Class.
"This new-day Teddy Roosevelt", some say/
"can only reach high office through great luck".
Eschewing country clubs, and pay-to-play,
he challenges our Youth to give a fuck. 
The WallStreet bankers Hilary gave voice
now fuel an "Independent" Adams run.
Predictably, big corporations' choice
defends the way their sweetheart deals get done.
The pendulum's excursion so far Right
now falters in one growing pool of light.

What endures

Immortal horses balked at being blamed,
and told Achilles what Apollo'd done.
No Trojan spearman'd stained his boyfriend's name;
against Olympus, no man could have won.
Too young to bid for Helen's fabled charms,
no oaths compelled this pair to sail to war.
Each happy to sleep in the other's arms,
they'd come to settle Sparta's cuckold's score.
The Trojans never really stood a chance,
once Agamemnon'd rallied all of Greece.
Since Paris failed to keep it in his pants,
the House of Priam'd nevermore know peace.
Domestic bliss was never in their fates;
their mingled ashes guard the trade-route straits.

the Fall

Zelenskyy's way too cool to tip his hand
'when Vance and Trump upbraid his lack of cards.
He's not the fool who'd show these clowns the plans;
they're far too close to Putin, and his guards.
The Brezhnev-era legacy of planes,
lies burnt and punctured on their distant base.
They'll make no further sorties on Ukraine;
these beasts would take a decade to replace.
Mortality now camps at Putin's door;
his blitzkrieg hasn't rolled out as he planned.
His legacy's this grinding bloody war
that Russia's losing to the better man.
The Russian empire Catherine'd made great
strikes out and blusters as it dissipates

sic transit gloria mundi

Shall I compare ours to a fascist state?
Our spycraft dwarfs whatever'd come before.
As Orwell wrote in 1948,
we've doomed ourselves to '1984'.
In every pocket, there's a spy device;
each traffic-cam's connected to a screen.
An algorithm tallies who's been nice,
and who's the balky cog in this machine.
The president prefers an autocrat,
who freely lavishes emoluments
pretending not to notice he's so fat,
he seems to have consumed the government.
Enlightenment's bright stab at something new's
corrupted to the plaything of the Few.

So Influential!

The pendulum that ventured so far Right,
in Egypt, Turkiye, Russia, and Brazil,
now gathers steam descending from that height;
it's trending leftward, as it often will.
Defiant of the empire's grasping hand,
Zelenskyy called for bullets, not a ride.
and closing ranks behind one upright man
the West staked out the anti-Fascist side.
In Germany, and Finland, few forget:
imperial ambitions have great costs.
A neighbor who ignores a building threat
might suffer more than just the passing loss.
While global markets slide, implode, and slump,
Canadians were galvanized by Trump.

protection racket

Manipulating markets on a lark,
Trump tells himself he'd mastered minting cash.
Investors who've been left out, in the dark
now hold portfolios that might be trash.
Safe haven that the world had come to trust
to hold more value when the Markets fell,
with gross uncertainty, is going bust;
Trump's shot the US Treasuries to Hell.
Relief's available to those who'll kneel,
and promise to obey his every whim.
He'll carve out holes for microchips, and steel...
as long as a percentage flows to him.
That "swamp" that Trump had promised he would "drain"
has spread to inundate his febrile brain.

Smoot-Hawley reprised

The devastation Trumpty Dumpty's wrought
to implement Navarro's crackpot scheme,
discounts the human traits that can't be bought;
he's never built a friendship, nor a team.
America Alone! Like Mao TseTeng
determined to hold all the world at bay
at once, the global commerce web's unstrung.
And voters Red and Blue are gonna pay.
A grownup might concede he'd got it wrong,
but Cohn had trained him always to attack.
Determined to present himself as "strong",
what once he's said, he helpless to take back.
As if the universe ends at our shore
the orange dotard lists towards civil war.