America alone

Tech billionaires watch markets fade away
as Europe builds capacities at home.
Horizons dwindle where they're free to play;
America's increasingly alone.
"The Wealth of Nations" Adam Smith has taught
expands when parties all cooperate.
What's hard to make, is often better bought;
high tariffs will impoverish the State.
Three generations, we secured sea lanes
and Europe trusted we'd hold perils back.
But now that Putin's avid for Ukraine
his vassal Trump's been told to just retract.
Enablers, focused wholly on their stocks,
have conned our Ship of State right onto rocks.

eating lunch alone

Tech billionaires watch markets fade away
as Europe builds capacities at home.
Horizons dwindle where they're free to play;
America's increasingly alone.
"The Wealth of Nations" Adam Smith has taught
expands when parties all cooperate.
What's hard to make, is often better bought;
high tariffs will impoverish the State.
Vast industries rely on"Just'In-Time"
as parts and feedstocks shuttle back and forth.
We're sliding towards a slower paradigm.
if Trump plays nasty with the Great White North.
Enablers, focused wholly on their stocks,
have conned our Ship of State right onto rocks.

long fuse

The wound in Shelob's abdomen's still sore
where Samwise penetrated her with Sting
She's not allied with Sauron in this war
and nursed no appetite for Elvish rings.
Staunch mountain guardian, beyond all worth
no salary could hire a better ward.
She'd never known a fear in MiddleEarth
until this Hobbit, with his spell-wrapped sword.
Bucolic people, rarely moved to wrath
yet dauntless in defense of kin, and friends
like David facing down that guy from Gath
the Little Folk, on whom the War depends.
No witnesses were there to tell the tale
unless a palantir watched Morgul Vale.

high-maintenance

Dire Klytemnestra's not one to forgive
her husband gallivanting like he's Zeus,
with Trojan women, thinking they might live
beneath her roof! She won't take such abuse.
If Agamemnon ever could forget
Iphigenia, pleading for her life,
he can't escape his own Queen's well-knit net.
Surviving war, he's fodder for his wife.
"Great King" abroad, proved mortal once back home
No loyal minions guard the royal neck.
Pink from his bath, unarmored, and alone,
her axe proved more than towels could deflect.
Proud kings, entrusted with so many lives
failed tragically to please their fancy wives

Epstein's assets

The Kompromat in Jeffrey Epstein's files
sports tentacles encircling half the world.
The kind of scum who'd violate a child
don't want it known they'd paid for school-aged girls.
Had Peter Thiel remained above the noise
Nobody would remark it's very strange.
But, 'though his prediliction is for boys,
in his own special way, he too's deranged.
Backrooms, where deals get cut, and bribes change hands
inimical to what our Founders wrought,
have made the purse the measure of the man;
there, nothing's valued that has not been bought.
Where politics with money intersects
like rape, it's male control, not joy of sex.

The watchman on the walls of Elsinore
called forth Horatio, that he might speak.
Athenians had seen this scene before,
'though Shakespeare can't have read it in the Greek.
Oresteia saw his duty, and just struck;
pained vacillation's for a future Dane.
He won't get mired in introspective muck
when father's blood cries from the bathroom drain.
The terrors young Oresteia knew at night,
are not so obsolete as they might seem
For Hamlet, torments don't dissolve in light
They echo through the Prince of Denmark dreams.
Time-hallowed gem from Greece's Late Bronze Age
the Renaissance recast on London's stage.

family feud

Dire Klytemnestra's not one to forgive
her husband gallivanting like he's Zeus,
with Trojan women, thinking they might live
beneath her roof! She won't take such abuse.
If Agamemnon ever could forget
Iphigenia, pleading for her life,
he can't escape his own Queen's well-knit net.
Surviving war, he's fodder for his wife.
"Great King" abroad, proved mortal once back home
No loyal minions guard the royal neck.
Pink from his bath, unarmored, and alone,
her axe proved more than towels could deflect.
While better men won fame at distant Troy,
Thyestes was avenged by his glib boy.

jackboots

Republicans are questioning the cult
that tells them "Alex Pretti was the threat"
a party with no functioning adult
increasingly appears a losing bet.
The NRA had meekly broken ranks;
the Pretti execution's not OK.
Those kooks who'd advocate for owning tanks
perceive Steph Miller's take their arms away.
The knives are out; who's gonna take the blame
for policies Americans abhore?
What's being done in Donald Trump's own name
could usher Lincoln's party out the door.
The Fourth Reich Trump had fantasized he'd found
expired on Minnesota's blood-soaked ground

faith

Mark Carney spoke in Davos to the crowd
who knew they had to formulates a plan
to bypass Trump who spews such crap aloud.
They need to line up with a better man.
A new world order, shutting Trump outside
must be in place before the pending crash.
A global trade-web's not quickly contrived
when old alliances break in a flash.
O Canada! We turn our eyes to thee.
Last  bastion that won't crumble into dust
where citizen and immigrant breath free,
and Europeans still invest their trust.
Our glory days as hegemon are shot,
and only Trump takes pride in what he's got.

Rupture

Half Europe sees it's long past time to dump
those US bonds that keep this ship afloat.
'Though that might be too subtle to move Trump,
and Bessent's not the man to right this boat.
Some hope that Wall Street still retains the clout
to rein him in as Mattis did, before.
This Congress lacks the balls to throw him out,
and many there hope profit comes with war.
The order we contrived at Bretton Woods,
to stabilize the world, and make us rich,
four score and more was working pretty good.
Now, all is blown to Hell by Putin's bitch.
While Trump indulges one more hissy fit,
Mark Carney isn't taking any shit.

echoes of Tienanmen

On Tienanmen, one figure stood,  alone,
bagged groceries forgotten in his hands.
Stark image that still thrills us to the bone:
massed armor halted by one unarmed man.
The violence that Stephen Miller craves
to justify the Insurrection Act,
appeals to one so utterly depraved
he reasons from his passions, not from facts.
Each Cossack isn't welded to his horse;
Jack-booted thugs routinely "ride" in cars.
If we're not peons cowed by shows of force,
Americans won't meekly kneel to Czars.
He did what's right, without regard for fame
immortalized, 'though no one knows his name.

Persian prospects

The Mullahs cut the internet and phone
as if a world made deaf could not react
to evidence they're in this all alone;
like al-Assad, their patron's overtaxed.
Far-scattered proxies, doing Moscow's will
from Tartus to Caracas, and beyond
won't push on like they're underwritten still;
that stream of funds had been the only bond.
Transparency sustains democracy;
in darkness, counting votes would be a joke.
The underpinning of theocracy
is always violence, and fear, and smoke.
Two generations since Pahlavi fled
the price is on the Ayatollah's head.

Persian passions

Two generations, Persians in the street
display more piety than they may feel.
When Mullahs dictate how we shave, or eat,
Religion's more performative than real.
Sistani fled; he never meant to rule;
"My kingdom's not of this world" as it's said.
elSadr may dream government's his tool,
but ask Khoei how he got so dead.
The French threw off the Church when they ditched kings;
laïcité's been sacred, ever since.
'Though government can deal with many things
morality's just foreign to a Prince.
Another failure in al-Assad 's mold;
Khamenei lines his Moscow nest with gold.

the piper will be paid

The gold reserves are finite, when they're spent,
his bankers won't hold any cards to play.
The bankruptcy of Putin's government
looms ever closer with each passing day.
The blitzkrieg Putin's generals had planned
presumed the secrecy Joe Biden'd blown.
While Europe stands fast with the better man,
the Russians find they're in this fight alone.
Ukraine's imposing sanctions, of a sort;
the Shadow Fleet's diminished, one by one.
Explosions on the Baltic,  or in port,
discreetly,  Special Forces get it done.
Ambitions Putin plainly can't afford
condemned a generation to grim war.