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.

succession

McConnell took Mike Johnson by the nose,
and led him through the ways one can obstruct
our legislation like a knotted hose.
His party's over; our republic's fucked.
The rancor of Buchanan's feckless term
still festers in Kentucky's bluegrass heart.
Old lessons half a nation failed to learn
still rending our electorate apart.
Abe Lincoln's legacy has breathed its last
his party's now the one poised to secede.
Confederates enamored of the past
have cast their lot with corporations' greed.
When Cheneys won't break bread with MAGA pigs,
the GOP's past-due to join the Whigs.

what isn't universal isn't a right

Chuck Schumer said what Biden didn't dare;
the Netanyahu program will not do.
His OneState non-solution can't be fair
if human rights are only for the Jew.
benGurion kept faith when he endorsed
the plan to make us masters of our fate,
explicitly accepting, in due course,
the corresponding Arab ethno-state.
That TwoState plan lies dusty, on the shelf
and Bibi offers just more status quo.
Too rapt in machinations for himself
Chuck Schumer speaks for us; he's got to go.
The self-determination Kant prescribed
has got to be for more than just our tribe.

Merkavah

Ezekiel saw wheels revolve in wheels
supporting Him who dwells above the skies.
Uncertain if this vision were quite real,
but most explicit: all around were eyes.
Beside the ditch that watered Babylon
where grieving landless transients were kept,
recalling rain-fed fields of days long gone,
the prophet rose, where others sat and wept.
God's cedar footstool Solomon had built
reduced to ashes from the roof to vault
reverberates still in our people's guilt
'Cause history itself is all our fault.
Attentive readers see, if they're astute
Our Lord is ever with us, in galut.

uneasy rests the head

Disdainful of the noisesome, ill-bred mob
prince Charles played polo on his mummy's wealth.
Bereft, obliged long last to get a job
his fingers point to less than sterling health.
Diana was all Britain's princess bride
adored for charity, we felt she cared.
To coronate that woman at his side
the staunchest monarchists confess, they're scared.
An institution of another age;
John Locke explained its deep redundancy.
Camilla's never been the latest rage
but now she's stirring passions on the street.
A third King Charles! His namesakes are long dead.
We'll see how long this one can keep his head.

Funeral Games II

Now Shoigu's private army takes the field;
Kadyrov and Prigozhin've done the same.
As Putin totters, stakes have gotten real
The warlords drill their assets for the Game.
The Muslim has no clear play on the throne;
The Patriarch insists that's his to grant.
Kadyrov must take Chechnya for his own
to safeguard his own life, where others can't.
When Alexander passed, he left no son
mature enough to take an empire's helm.
Succession's where great legacies are won;
the people starve while dukes contest the realm.
Old patterns stamped in Europe's scarlet blood
reprised in Ukraine's snow, and ice, and mud.

Rus

Professor Snyder guides us through Ukraine
three thousand years and more since Colchis fell.
Brave argonauts risked life and limb for grain
His trophy bride made Jason's life a Hell.
Moroccan pirates held Gibraltar's strait;
Norse sailors couldn't buck that standing wave.
When Vikings were obliged to innovate,
their longboats plied the rivers, towed by slaves.
Far Muscovy presents the latest threat
like Lithuanians, and Poles before.
Ukrainians ain't going to forget
they bore the brunt of"Patriotic War".
ICBMs and oil are rough to eat
And in the end, Ukrainians have wheat.

Cassidy

Trump paid for lawyers to coordinate
the testimony House Committees heard.
They coached each witness to prevaricate;
we'd be great fools to take them at their word,
Such bullshit hadn't echoed in those Halls
since Reagan shipped the Mullahs lethal toys.
'Til Cassidy stepped up and showed some balls,
we'd trusted governance to good old boys.
Democracy requires the public know
when those in highest office turn to crime.
There's leniency for those who fess up, though
the last to testify will serve most time.
To keep omerta once one colleague's sung
is gonna get the bitter-enders hung.

death throes

McConnell hoped to take the mob in hand
surrendering ring-leaders to the court.
But cultist aren't easy to command;
their leash is long, and turtle-arms are short.

The Milton Friedman faction's now at war
within a party that's become a cult.
The sort of bile they dared not spew before
when some of them presented as adult,

Has made a star of Marjorie T. Greene.
The blondest to insist Trump didn't lose,
she blames an international machine
involving lasers, ballot-fraud, and Jews.
As long as leadership gives such kooks gigs
The GOP's on track to join the Whigs.

patterns

Laomedon was fool enough to cheat
the gods who'd built his city's fabled wall.
He died before the story was complete;
Astyanax would see Troy's epic fall.
The timeframe of the gods seems long to Man
who wants to see cause lockstep with effects.
It took blind Homer to portray the plan
How grueling War ensues from hot-blood Sex.
Fair Aphrodite knows she's Ares' twin
allied against the fractious Argive host.
but Pallas and her Ithakan still win;
Our bard knows Wisdom counts, and counts the most.
No education's worth the time it took
if it can't grant a classic a fair look.

new eyes

Professor Mancall faulted Madison
for being less than optimally woke.
Joe Ellis scoffs at the comparison,
applying modern standards' a poor joke.
Our Framers were exceptionally sage,
the brightest lamps of our enlightenment.
To judge them by the standards of this age
disserves a most Progressive president.
Each generation's born into its world;
a later yardstick's never gonna fit.
The interim's seen new ideas unfurled
not just technologies, but moral wit.
Times change! And ethics standards can progress--
or retrograde to Stephen Miller's mess.

populist

Like Mussolini pumping up a crowd,
Trump's rally conjures Nuremberg of yore.
His planted BrownShirts got 'em chanting loud
as if they thirst for blood, and for race-war.
No vision of a better USA,
no sense all wasn't perfect in our past...
He sells nostalgia for a Golden Age
historians just shake their heads, aghast.
The "greatest generation" fought, and bled
to scour such abom'nations from the Earth.
But bad ideas perversely won't stay dead
when they're convenient to clowns of no worth.
Millennials are gonna have to fight
old battle with the revenant far-Right.

ramblings

"...they  took the airports!" Trump seems drunk on words.
His staffers scramble to divert the blame
for one more joy-ride into the Absurd.
Oblivious, he thinks it's all a game.
Tomorrow, they'll dismiss it as "a joke"
"of course the president knows history!"
But shit he spews while flying high on coke
affords his critics much hilarity.
Mike Pence must know the 25th by rote
and how succession works--when it's the  case
that there's no time to put it to a vote--
but Trump's more functional than half his Base.
That gig at WalMart doesn't sound so bad
when writer have to serve a boss gone mad.

lala land

"...they  took the airports!" Now he's on a roll.
Trump blithers when he's got nothing to say.
His writers cringe; he's so out of control.
The tranquiler gun's too far away.
Tomorrow, they'll dismiss it as "a joke"
"of course the president knows history!"
But shit he makes up when he's high on coke
affords his critics much hilarity.
Mike Pence must know the 25th by rote
and how succession works--when it's the  case
when there's no time to put it to a vote--
but Trump's more functional than half his Base.
The satirists are drowning in their cups
When Trump's reality's what he makes up.

mis-reading history

At last! Pelosi will initiate
preliminary talks...about a talk...
about committees to investigate...
But Nancy--being Nancy--may yet balk.
She fears that voters punished Kenneth Starr;
next mid-term cost Republicans House seats.
But that analogy's been stretched too far.
Too scared to win, she's blinkered by defeat.
Soon, history must pass her by, by gosh;
the tide's not really under her control.
News cameras are flocking to Amash,
who flipped his party off to save his soul.
All scandals don't come in one standard size;
Trump's treason's not the same as Willie's lies.

infidelity

Trump wants our longtime allies to defray
the cost to billet troops on foreign soil.
His shoulder's cold if they won't pay to play;
The LongPeace is dissolving in turmoil.
Taipei may build a tower in his name,
and wink when he defaults on what he owes.
That he's corrupt, they're not the ones to blame
to buy a friend against their mainland foes.
But Xi perceived he's not a friend to trust;
he'll pick off border-states like so much fruit.
Let academics scream that it's unjust;
they bring no armaments to this dispute.
Like James Buchanan, many lives before;
Trump's legacy will be a world at war.

1066

All history's contingent; day by day
each choice makes universes twin, and fork.
Olde England might have gone another way
had Hardrada not left his mail at York.
For Edward's heir, both battles came too late;
the fyrd that watched the straits perceived no harm
October found few souls to share his fate;
the conscripts served their time, went home to farm.
The French domesticated their own Norse
they drank more wine than beer, these quondam Danes.
But Norway kept the war-blood hot, of course
full-armed they'd devastate the Northern Thanes.
Whole empires hang upon a change of wind
and whether popes opine one king had sinned.

renown

The arm that Beowulf can  bear, by right
was Grendel's 'til he took the Danes for meat
corporeal reminder of the night
when Denmark learned the value of a Geat.
Between their raids along the British coast
Danes recognized (some) Britons as their kin
familial liaisons of guest, to host
were critical in lands without an inn!
Like Hrothgar, Beowulf produced no son
at last, there's only Wiglaf at his side
no dynasty inherits what he'd won
and only poets know how well he died.
The king who gets no heir's got something wrong
bards build their patrons' ancestry through song.

What Happened

post-mortem, Clinton mulls her failed campaigns
if only Bernie'd called a sooner halt!
Page after tiresome page, her book complains
that everyone but Hillary's at fault.
The deal cut with Obama came to naught
and him so suave and gracious really hurts.
The many SuperDelegates she'd bought
all failed to serve her up her just deserts.
The policies she dared not advocate
set Sanders' Independent crowds afire
she offered only pablum 'til too late
and Bannon won it low, while she went higher.
Dry talking points could never make us feel
we crave a Roosevelt, and a New Deal

echoes

When William Jennings Bryant up and quit
his party took it for a baleful sign.
There followed Wilson's apoplectic fit,
and then, one'd look a blackguard to resign.
His staffers muddled through as best they could
and punted big decisions to his wife
who signed the bills she knew her Woodrow would
clandestine monument to his short life.
So now, the house of Trump is poised to fall.
each day, his Secretaries get to weigh
the point at which to make that judgement call
if honor's better served to go, or stay, 
aware how Powell's name was used to sell
the pointless war which made Iraq a Hell