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.

Canadian spine

Mark Carney hears the threats, but doesn't flinch;
abusive partnerships must duly end.
He'll trade with someone farther, in a pinch;
most Europeans won't extort a friend.
A life in banking's steeled him for this role;
he's taught the bitter tale of Hawley-Smoot.
A lesser man who'd dreamt he'd wield control
stands poised to learn what Canada's about.
A New World Order like we haven't known,
since Herbert Hoover crashed us in that ditch.
Surpassing BREXIT for the worst self-own
to advertise who's Putin's eager bitch.
Our neighbors to the North will have to lead
until the MAGATs man up, and secede.

Foreign agent

Seducing Trump's been Putin's greatest trick;
he plays that dotard like a gilded flute.
'Though Arnold Palmer awed him with his dick,
it's Vladimir who's is balls-deep up his chute.
The Seven Deadly Sins personified,
amalgamated in one orange lump.
Soi dissant "Christians" meekly deified
this antichrist, and kneel before their Trump.
Roy Cohn had thought this shaygetz would be fun
to pummel like a rentboi in his bed.
But Vladimir's the man who got it done
a really different sort of anti-Red.
The Kremlin's puppet does what he's been told;
Ukraine is just the first of what's been sold.

brinksman

"Great television!" Putin's lapdog snarled
reverting to a scale he feels is real.
Deluded that he's merely playing cards
when frontline allies need a weapons deal.
The Europeans watched Zelenskyy stand
against the bullies, knowing he is right,
and rushed to underwrite the better man;
Ukrainians are waging the West's fight.
The Nazi threat our fathers' fathers fought
now not in Germany, but here at home,
took just one demagogue who's long been bought
and wants America to sit alone.
While Trump pursues his stupid fictive debt
all Europe's unified against the threat.

whose asset?

What Kompromat on Trump does Putin hold,
that keeps his creature fawning at his side?
Zelenskyy would be left out in the cold
and would soon need not ammo, but a ride.
Or would, if Europe didn't take a stand
behind one country fighting for us all.
While bullies mock and jeer the better man
as if it's only poker, or futbol.
Gross beauty pageant impresario
presumes consent when bulling in on teens
who might not feel empowered to say 'no'
to one who gets to vote on who's crowned "queen".
Beyond the nasty stench of pay-to-play
Trump's dealings wouldn't stand the light of day.

Orange Manbaby

The Kremlin propaganda Trump repeats
finds paltry purchase in his party's ranks.
Control those rubles bought now seems complete
beyond the fondest dreams of Wall Street banks.
Machinery McConnell'd built so strong
has been co-opted by the KGB.
Agenda Mitch can now perceive are wrong
advance without the turtle's by-your-leave.
Americans who don't watch FauxNews know
Ukrainians are waging the West's war.
Against the ancient grasping ursine foe,
they'll have no part of empire anymore.
Those files of Kompromat, so deep and wide
keep Putin's poodle fawning at his side.

as Below, so Above

Fleet Hermes offered to take Ares' place
snared by Hephaestos in the smith-god's bed.
Imagining the Goddess' embrace
bright ichor floods his visage hectic red.
The cuckold seems less sanguine for his part
deluded he might be the only one
to stoke the fires in Aphrodite's heart.
As if she'd given thought beyond what's fun.
Athena saw no reason here for mirth;
she'd seen such passions playing out before.
On high Olympus, or on lowly Earth
the fleeting love's prelude to grinding war.
No less than his Achaean kings and queens
Homeric gods seem hormone-addled teens.

JRR's groundwork

The pride of Denethor was Sauron's tool
to broach the citadel so stoutly built.
The fall of Faramir was doubly cruel
increasing as it must, a father's guilt.
John Milton resonates through Tolkien's work
his highest praise is saved for humble Sam.
While no one--quite--calls Boromir a jerk
Galadriel--for one--accounts him damned.
His outcome's dicey 'til his final breath
defending Hobbits under Amon Hen.
Unworthy life, redeemed in noble death
A Catholic author's jaundiced view of Men.
Rejecting allegory out of hand,
he can't transcend the world he understands.

Byronic

Lord Byron hid his penchant for the lads
behind the pretty objects one expects.
To publicize those conquests would be mad,
when England criminalized even sex.
What fantasies Don Juan might entertain
while mingling sweet in someone else's bed,
in neither prose, not verse did he explain.
We're free to speculate, now he lies dead. 
The literary version of a man
elides complexity, as fiction must.
At best, it sketches out what verbiage can;
there's nuance lost, when simplifying lust.
Vain groupies, hoping each might be his bride
don't grasp he's batting for the other side.