going down!

Trump's cultists foundered in their little boats
when richer guys in bigger boats roared past.
Grim allegory of the way they vote:
not their own interests, but for the ass

who loves the poorly-educated marks.
Unfeeling merchant of fake remedies
for ailments he foists on them in the dark
as long as they adore him on their knees.
The minions who'd install Trump on a throne
seem fixed on bringing embryos to birth.
No broad philosophy to call their own
acknowledges another human's worth.
Those laws--like"Gravity"--they jeer as fake
condemn them to the bottom of a lake.

rodef-dam II

Thyestes frolicked in his brother's bed,
and Atreus, in turn, took due offense.
He served his nephews diced, and stewed, and dead.
This family's not good at Future Tense.
And Agamemnon's wife gave him a son
a matricide by all established facts
who'd only done what needed to be done
'cause his own father'd fallen to her axe.
Orestes was ordained to break the spell;
Athena took him for her very own
Inventing courts to thwart the Hags of Hell.
Exiled from Mycenae, he found a home.
The Trojan War's excerpted from this tale
Of how hereditary dynasts fail.

rodef-dam

His father's murder cried out from the Earth.

Orestes knew what duty'd bid him do

to prove himself a pious son of worth.

but matricide's a Capital sin, too.

While wise Penelope wove a fair shroud

her cousin Klytemnestra wrought a snare.

The textile-arts such ladies were allowed

Go way past weaving, sewing, and repair.

Hog-tied while stepping out of his warm bath
so like his daughter, on that Aulis pyre
a sacrificial beast beneath the ax,
he conquered Troy, but not his lady's ire.
Immortal poetry preserves their names;

the House of Atreus went down in flames.

madness

Trump sneers the salary's beneath his grade
yet schemes incessantly to pocket more.
He squanders many times what he'd get paid,
and looks to profit in a civil war.
The golf-carts Secret Service have to rent
to guard him tee, and fairway, rough, and green
enrich him with a banned emolument;
that money's budgeted for DoD.
The Deficit Republicans decry
--when Democrats would give the poor a meal--
get no attention when Trump bleeds us dry.
as long as WallStreet's cut in on the deal.
Barr's DoJ won't send this perp to jail.
But no one doubts Trump's run clear off the rails.

Basest instincts

Trump's brownshirts mobilized from out of state
to terrorize minorities who'd stand.
Kyle Rittenhouse tried hard to compensate
deficiencies he felt less than a man.
Americans who won't live on our knees,
assembled as has always been our right.
But in Kenosha, civil liberties
are only yours if cops perceive you're white.

When asked what he would do with four more years

Trump had no answer what he's running for.

Instead of programs, he expounds on fears

but sees his best hope in a civil war.
America's worst trends now bear his face;
Trump's hoping voters split on lines of race.

projecting

Max Weber taught: without monopoly
on violence, what you've got's not a "State".
Miskinis gave Brownshirts impunity
He wears the badge of what he'd abdicate.
Kenosha's cops demurred to play their role
to keep the peace, as contracts said they should.
So brownshirts flooded in to take control
in camos, where--before--they'd worn white hoods.
Steve Bannon's betting voters rush to blame
Joe Biden for the chaos Trump foments.
A president who weekly stokes the flames,
denies the buck stops with his government.
The "law-and-order" guy who eggs on mobs
egregiously unfit to do his job.

Falwell's downfall

The oath of Chastity at Liberty

To students is transparently a ruse

The Falwells' marriage keeps their love-life free

the student-body's their's for private use.

Endorsing TrumptyDumpty quashed the tale

that Michael Cohen meant to publicize.

For Jerry Falwell, everything's for sale,

the truth no less than any practiced lies.

A university should form adults

participating in a nation's life.

But Falwell's enterprise seems more a cult

 procuring meat to sate his cougar wife.

Humiliation's just what he enjoys,

but satisfying her needs troops of boys.