Kool-Aid Cure for Crusaders
(From The Triumph of Strife: an homage to Dante Alighieri and Percy Shelley)

He reads from teleprompter lines his words
That other minds have written for his guide
Which pass before his eyes like flocks of birds

Yet from his tongue they seldom smoothly glide
Those epithets increasingly unskilled
He says let’s try committing suicide

For if we don’t someday we might get killed
He gladly eats our hamburger today
And promises next Tuesday we’ll get billed

For overseas are monsters we must slay
And so he foments fights against façade
While seeing to it that our pockets pay

The piper playing poor his promenade
A misfit martinet Marquis de Sade

The proud prevaricating prince propounds
A theory of perception management
Thus from his mouth emerge no more than sounds

Which bear resemblance to no truth unbent
For only does his style of speaking count
To those with seats in his revival tent

Low expectations seldom need surmount
A bar set any higher than the dirt
Nor any credit balance the account

Of one who rolled the dice and lost his shirt
So that his banker backers mainly sought
To dodge default with which they like to flirt

They generated fear that people bought
And then claimed that the fear precluded thought