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.

waterloo?

The glorious adventure Dugin sold
to prove autocracies are always best
collapsed, confronting hunger, thirst, and cold,
contending with this step-son of the West.
Assured Zelensky'd lose his shit and flee
confronted with massed military might
Vlad Putin's stymied by the brave and free;
Ukrainians spearhead the whole world's fight.
The Finns, the Czechs, the Afghans... know full well
how best to make their occupiers squirm.
As life for non-combatants goes to Hell
Ukrainians are unified, and firm.
Let Putin starve for anyone to trust;
His barbarism's looking like a bust.

History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes

Ukrainians defy the latest czar
to think the ruthless get to rule the world.
Misunderstanding who these people are;
their blue and yellow banner streams, unfurled.
A charismatic president who'll fight
when Dugin swore he'd hasten to retreat
inspires discussion of ultimate right
and if the Kremlin's facing a defeat.
Like Spanish communists, four lifetimes back
this anti-fascist fight draws volunteers
who see the global threat in this attack
on all that our democracies hold dear.
Reprising blunders empires made before,
now, Putin stands to lose more than a war.

the deaths of empires

Potempkin army, bogged down in the mud,
presents a turkey-shoot for Lend/Lease planes.
To supplement indigenous red blood,
the West's been swift to rally 'round Ukraine.
The facile victory that Putin craved
to pump his mythos up in Russians' eyes,
was just a phantom conjured in his cave,
among the close cabal who draft his lies.
Already, Moscow mothers want to know
why darlingVanya lies so wan and still.
If there's to be a fight, she knows the foe
sits at his desk, commanding those who kill.
The Staatsbund Kant had hoped would end all war
looks urgent like it rarely has before.