The Telltale Heartless
(From The Triumph of Strife: an homage to Dante Alighieri and Percy Shelley)

No ticking of a heart could one detect
And yet he kept existing nonetheless.
From some location undisclosed he wrecked

Whole nations with his obtuse brutishness
Despite dissembling as a way of life
No crime against the truth would he confess

And so continued years of bloody strife
That he on soldiers and the innocent
Inflicted, like a rusty, jagged knife

A heartless wound infected with a bent
And twisted lust for power, loot, and perks
He led from deep in shadows those he sent

To act upon the world like puerile jerks
Too numb to look inside where evil lurks

Yet still he got those physical exams
Administered at taxpayers' expense
Which like his own corrupt and clueless scams

Produced results that made no earthly sense
For utter silence can't but indicate
A thing undead from breathing fog so dense

That no interpretation could translate
The deathly void of conscience at its core
A wretch who knew how to manipulate

A propaganda catapulting bore
By playing to the ego far outsized
Of one who thought himself adept at war

A tyro team that only realized
The empty vanity that they both prized

So silence often makes an awful sound
As flat-lined brainwaves on a CRT
In this case far more vicious than profound

A duo dumb and dumber currently
Have somehow wormed their way atop the pole
But found its summit void of empathy

Much like the telltale heartless on parole
From his life's sentence briefly granted time
To demonstrate a lack of any soul

Who just relapses into yet more crime
Unreconstructed and without remorse
He revels in a secrecy sublime

More like the one-trick pony than the horse
He hopes to leave our land with no recourse

For if he duped his "boss" so easily
Then he could do the same to all of us
Who, after all, have no taste for the free

But who, instead, need some drunk blunderbuss
To shoot us with his shotgun in the face
Like captive quail, we never make a fuss

When raised as game, we die without a trace
For sport of one whose armored limousine
Makes him impervious to his disgrace

And ours, as well, for tolerating mean
And arrogant abusers of our trust
Who lie to keep in practice till they glean

The meat from off our bones; till they go bust
From gorging on us, as they think they must

So heartless Dick and brain-dead Dubya, too,
Have now combined to act a tale absurd
Two players poor, upon their perch they coo

Like parrots who know but a single word
Or chicken hawks who know when to lay low;
Whose only known laid egg looks like a turd

And smells as such, as well, yet still they crow
Like hens at sundown, heralding a world
Turned upside down by what they do not know;

By broken foreign legions they have hurled
Halfway around the globe, yet still they strut
While handing out to widows flags now furled;

Forever staining graven stones like smut:
Their heartless lust for war no gold can glut.