Red Lines and Red-Baiting
(after the sonnet style of Alexander Pushkin's Eugene Onegin)

Looks like Mother Russia's patience
With the "West" has now expired.
Faced with arrogant complacence
Something more than talk's required.
Present danger monumental:
Missiles "merely" continental
Now move into nearby yards.
"Not to worry! Best Regards!"
Gorbachev or Yeltsin, maybe,
Might (to Russia's detriment)
Buy such bovine excrement.
Putin, though, is no one's baby.
Better now to clear the porch.
Wait, and fools will light the torch.

Take your surplus junk and vacate
Lands where no one needs your stuff.
Empty words no longer placate.
Now let's see who'll call whose bluff.
Back to where you came from, quickly,
Or expose your "army," sickly,
Overstretched, and way too few:
U.S., NATO, nothing new.
Best "get while the good's worth getting."
Saigon/Kabul time draws near.
Planned retreats leave less to fear.
Bankrupt Empire's sun is setting.
Eastern Europe's neighborhood
Need not threaten. Understood?

Nixon and McCarthy, low road.
Tricky Dick, Tailgunner Joe.
Found the all-too-easy, no load
Path to bash their "lefist" foe.
Simply call them "red" or "pinky"
Voters then would find them stinky.
Democrats curled up and hid,
Lost, no matter what they did.
"Red" meant "communist" or "Russian,"
"Soviet," or something worse.
Easy. No need to rehearse.
Not the slightest repercussion.
Now the Democrats think they
Can do the same, and thus make hay.

U.S.A., two right-wing factions
One for sale and one for rent.
Both sling slurs without retractions
Pissing into their own tent.
Vitriol, prevarication,
Towards the Russian Federation;
Sanctions hurting us as well.
Soon, our friends say "Go to Hell!"
Their red lines, and our red-baiting
Which will shape the coming times?
They save nickles, we spend dimes.
Western currencies inflating.
Russia/China projects huge.
First the clouds, and then deluge.