the royal writ

Eight legs lent Sleipnir traction on the snow;

it wouldn't do for Odin to get stuck.
The Roman fashion, building cobbled roads,
would need a labor force that gave a fuck.
Heroic architecture's rare, of course,
Reliant as it is on taxing funds.
No king could build such things of he were Norse;
what one boat's crew can't do, did not get done.
The Book of Judges shills for monarchy
to tax, and underwrite as may seem good.
Portraying tribal life as anarchy,
where individuals did as they would.
Each libertarian needs all-wheel-drive
where workers don't contribute to the hive.

Слава Україні!

Ukrainians repulsing Russian tanks,
remember throwing Nazis out before.
The women and retirees in their ranks
nurse no delusions in the present war.
The Tzarist empire Gorbachev renounced
holds no nostalgia for the Kremlin's yoke.
The prospect of oppressors getting trounced
to many, seems the century's best joke.
Old dreams, that Europe could know lasting peace--
As Kant sketched out, two hundred years ago--
had dimmed as fascists everywhere increased
and yet moved forward, be it fast, or slow.
Sunflowers sprouting in the vernal mud
bloom brightest where they've drunk invaders' blood.

Love and Death

Fleet-footed Thetis just can't understand
how could her darling love what's doomed to die?
The gods had given her to such a man,
but she'd felt no affection for the guy.
This demi-god's more rooted in the world;
eternity's for deities above.
While Zeus fucks every pretty boy and girl
In Patrocles, he's lost his one true love.
Fair Helen launched the action on our stage,
but then retreated to a minor role.
Achilles is the wonder of his age;
the all-consuming war's his to control.
The paragon that Greeks aspired to be
mourns for his therapon, like it was he.

Funerary Games

His mother urged Achilles to get laid;
a woman's love might ease him through the night.
But now his partner's dead, his world's unmade.
No drive remains for life, or love, or fight.
Let Trojans do for Hector as seems fit;
that uncorrupted corpse is theirs to burn.
Our hero's too soul-numb to give a shit;
He'll see the forms played out, 'til it's his turn.
The fatal arrow's artfully off-stage;
we only learn he'd died in volume II.
He'll never know the aches of middle-age
or taste diminishment, as mortals do.
Peleides blazed bright by burning fast 
among Achaeans, foremost, first, and last.

useful idiot

LePen deems Putin's land-grabs no concern
to Frenchmen facing crises of their own.
Another generation's yet to learn;
all Europeans share one common home.
The Baltics know their fate's wed to Ukraine.
Forever on their guard, ex-soviet
republics know appeasement's stark insane;
the Munich lesson's not one they'll forget.
Soft-pedalling anti-Muslim rhetoric
she plays the grown-up option to Zemmour.
As much as bankers' toadies make us sick,
she's plunging ever deeper in this sewer.
The Kremlin's meddling in our governance
looks eerily familiar now in France.

cupping

What octopus signed Michael Phelps' back
and left its calling-card all down his arm?
How many other suffered such attack
and was there more than superficial harm?
A lifetime, they've been honing their technique
and fear one race might turn on happenstance;
one top performance at their very peak
is too important to be left to chance!
Competitors will grasp for any edge
they've long since shaved off all their body hair.
And now the purplish blots of hemorrhage
accessorize their minimal swimwear.
Where one can't carry talismans for luck
they bear stigmata of the cups that suck.

Zelensky

Ukrainians defend their motherland
more staunchly than the Kremlin dreamt they could.
Each conscript Putin sends counts as one man,
yet in the aggregate, they're not much good.
Goliath's spear was like a weaver's beam;
his armor outweighed David on its own.
But tanks are helpless in the mud of Spring
when thermite bombs come COD by drone.
The prize Napoleon could never take
when his logistics foundered in the snows
is resonant with Putin's new mistake
in underestimating this new foe.
The shepherd beneath notice of a king
lays low marauding bears with just a sling.