Is it all just chance? Carthage was at the height of its power at about the time Romulus and Remus began suckling at the teat of the wolf. And so it goes.

The laden ships, the Inland Sea
Mighty Baal, thy kingdom be
Bestride the world, thy ships for hire
Adventurers who left old Tyre
To start anew in western lands
And carve a city with bare hands
And now you call the west your home
Still knowing not the infant Rome
The Punic language spoke by all
The Latin still an infant’s squall
And yet the scales were trembling now
The Carthage gods with troubled brow
For they foresaw the future clear
The end of Carthage drawing near
The universe is never still
Who climbs the mountain, crests the hill
Will find that on the other side
The slope is steeper, and the ride
From top to bottom’s but a blink
No time to act, no time to think
And so it is with tide and time
The world doth speak, and speak in rhyme
To tell of others who before
Laid up their riches, filled their store
With goods and gold and heady wine
And saw each day as good and fine
That all must end, the circle made
And time to rest in blessed shade

Ben Rhodes was the principal advisor to President Obama during the negotiations on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran, the deal that gave Iran everything it wanted up front, including permission to build nuclear weapons as soon as the deal ran out and 150 billion dollars in cash which it promptly used to fund Hezbollah, its terrorist partner in the Middle East. The deal was so one sided, so favorable to Iran, that even the Mullahs were astonished at how easily they had conned the naïve Americans. But with the current anti-Mullah, anti-government protests in Iran, the American media and the Obama sycophants are claiming that political unrest in Iran and revolution against the government was what Ben Rhodes and Barack Obama had planned for the deal to accomplish all along. Yeah, right. Any plan or deal that Obama made that turned out to favor the United States was purely accidental, and not at all desired or intended.

I think that we can all agree
That planning by Obama
Would always turn out not to be
As good as what yo’ mama
Had told you back in second grade
That tying your shoelaces
And never thinking club a spade
Would likely take you places
That being careful what you say
And being nice to others
And working hard for honest pay
And honoring your mothers
Obama scorned such good advice
For chosen Rhodes less traveled
In consequence we paid the price
When all of it unraveled

My friend Og sat in front of his cave, chewing on a piece of a large hairy beast slowly burning on the fire.

Why not, I said, use forks and knives
To help your many kids and wives
Consume yon hairy beast with some dispatch?
He grunted as he turned to stare
Into the flames as burning hair
Produced a stink that’s awfully tough to match
He said he had no use for those
And had contempt for folks who chose
To elevate themselves to what they’re not
There’s nothing wrong with using hands
To rip a carcass, veins and glands
And eat it even when it starts to rot
Technology will be the end
Of everything, now hear me friend
And listen when I say the old way’s best
At first we start with knives and spoons
And then after a few short moons
There’s dinner parties, place cards and the rest
And then I’ll have to wash my hands
And we’ll invite the other bands
With small talk sipping something on the rocks
Then candlesticks and table cloths
And bread bowls filled herby broths
And wifey will insist I change my socks
Where will it end, if once we start
For once we and the old ways part
Our lives will never be the way we were
I left him there on seeing that
The fire blazed with flaring fat
And the large smoking beast began to stir

The American Civil War had its moments of glory, but mostly it had sadness and homesickness.

The campfire low, the men in gray
Sat in the dark, as still as stone
Intent upon the fiddler’s play
The mournful notes, the sorrowed tone
Beyond the trees, blue pickets lie
Enraptured by the haunting tune
That said tomorrow some will die
And lie in fields forever June
Brothers once, but now at war
They dream upon the world they had
The world of home, and love and more
A world so suddenly gone mad

Obama gave the Mullahs their Christmas presents early, hoping to receive his presents sometime down the road, but an election intervened and Obama’s future Christmas presents have been lost in transit.

And so there he was, in a pre-Christmas mode
With presents for Mullahs, with his down the road
His reasons far-reaching, his mind crystal clear
A long road he’d traveled, with victory near
The presents he’s giving were set to one side
Full knowing that Santa’s not starting his ride
Until that bright future when all fairly gleams
And arms are laid down in his fondest of dreams
Of Santa and reindeer and bright Christmas trees
As he lies in bed trying to catch him some Zs
While downstairs the adults drink mulled Christmas wine
While waiting for Santa to give them the sign
That Christmas was here by the sound of his sleigh
And nuclear treaties ‘neath tree he will lay
For years Barack waited and hoped for white snow
On that bright golden night when he’d hear  ho ho ho

‘Tis the season for an Eve of Christmas poem in iambic pentameter as it might have been delivered in elegantly ringing Elizabethan tones from the hallowed boards of the Globe Theater in late 16^th century England. On stage, the Companions rise as the King raises his glass and exclaims

‘Tis Christmas Eve and midnight draws apace
We raise a bumpered glass to what’s to come
With joy upon each red and merry face
We count our fortune numbered by the sum
And so my friends I bid you all goodnight
And cast our slumbers deep upon our beds
To waken in the golden morning light
With trinities of angels in our heads
‘Tis Christmas morn and all the world awake
To celebrate the birth of Christ the King
Born of the Virgin and died for our sake
In praise of which the thrice-blest angels sing
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL

He softly walks the forest of his mind
Each bole the storehouse of his threaded thought
The leaves and branches supple, intertwined
His life full laid upon what he’d been taught
He rests beside the freely flowing brook
Each pebble washed to brilliant diamond shine
The dancing light to him an open book
The air upon his tongue like new made wine
The evening light grows dim and day’s events
Are catalogued and filed as bird calls cease
He lights a lamp and knows without pretense
That at the end of day he is at peace

Global warming/climate change was always a virtue scam, designed to make guys like Al Gore very rich by selling virtue in the form of carbon credits to captains of industry desirous of staying on the right side of the leftist political establishment. It made no difference to the scammers or to the scammed that there was clear evidence that the earth was considerably warmer a thousand years ago than it is now, made no difference that Greenland ice cores told an entirely different story than the one they were peddling. From a scam designed to make Al Gore rich to a device to destroy the West in general and the United States in particular was a short step, as the left seized on global warming/climate change to gain their cherished dream of destroying capitalism in general and western civilization in particular through the medium of massive wealth transfer to the third world. Climate change, once embraced by the radical left, never had anything to do with climate, rather it had to do with destroying the West. And to the left, destroying the West was its greatest virtue of all.

The Vikings sailed the Arctic sea
A thousand years ago
And found it to be quite ice free
With not a single floe
They farmed a Greenland lush and warm
Wild grapes provided wine
Stout houses proof against a storm
And were abed by nine
But no one cared what Vikings did
A thousand years ago
All evidence was quiet hid
‘Mid cries of no more snow
The scam worked well for many years
Al Gore got very rich
Yet nothing came of warming fears
Complexity’s a bitch

Hysteria grips us and drives us insane
No proof is required, the guilt will remain
For daring to say that a woman is cute
And holding a door is the act of a brute
Assault is what anyone wants it to be
And feminists cry men must sit down to pee
Where maleness is toxic and must be erased
And gender is sexist and must be replaced
The world I grew up in has gone out of style
A world where a pat on behind drew a smile
Or maybe a frown and a slap in the face
But that was the end, everything in its place
The cops were not called, assault charges not filed
But everything now causes some be riled
It just isn’t safe to be men anymore
We live in the midst of a feminist war

The Democrats are giddy with excitement about the results of the recent Alabama special Senate election, won by a Democrat for the first time in 28 years. But before you get your underwear all twisted up, the Alabama special election was not Shiloh or Cold Harbor. Yes, the country is at political war with itself, but the election between Moore and Jones, taken as an incident in that war, was simply a case of one candidate being accused of dating teen aged girls some forty years ago when he was in his early thirties. No crimes were alleged, no indictments issued, no trial ensued, no evidence presented, no verdict arrived at as to the truth or falsity of the charges. The allegations may very well have been true, and if so it shows Roy Moore was a pre-dater, not a predator. The result had nothing to do with national politics. In 2020 Alabama voters will elect a Republican to the seat now temporarily held by Democrat Doug Jones, and nothing strategically has changed or will change over the next two years because of this election. What IS important about this election is that for the first time, but not the last, a candidate has been defeated by allegations that he behaved inappropriately forty years ago. Not criminally. Inappropriately. The feminist mob is screaming with delight, but this will not end well for the feminists or for the country. Politics is a copy-cat league, and the criminalization of alleged inappropriate behavior has only just begun, and the accusers are in charge of determining what is inappropriate.

Men are men, but let’s be kind
We pat a lass on the behind
She smiles or puts you in your place
By slapping hard your grinning face
Whichever, man, your goose is cooked
If all goes well you’re only booked
But politics? Not on your life
Not even if she was your wife