you dress the idea of your importance in perennial regalia
you situate yourself as the highest star in the cluster
neither leader nor equal but impotent in the usual paraphernalia
you’re under the control of the direst forgers of bluster

pontificating tacit equanimity you attempt to hold us with honey
were you wounded by your own unruly and unfaithful family?
you found your mentor by listening for the sound of money
restored to fragile wealth by the potent balm of popularity

as principled as a bird; no accommodation is your strategy
seduction in dress-up; your speech winds down in empty phrases
when not clapping your people fear it’s their own elegy
while sisters of suffrage shine more brightly than false praises

the arrow of time points at our planet’s own apogee
we can’t guide ourselves by the scandal of your superlatives
indifferent tides of unknowns are as inscrutable as a syzygy
infinity takes away the laurels; tragedy ensues in the derivatives

syzygy: an alignment of three celestial objects
after Ode iii. XXX by Horace and The Seven Sisters by Marshall Hryciuk