PAD Day 18: An Epic Regime

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "reconsideration" poem, and (2) "Today, we don’t challenge you to write all of a long, dramatic, narrative poem, but we invite you to try your hand at writing a poem that could be a section or piece of one. Include rhyme, include unlikely and dramatic scenes (maybe a poem about a bank robbery! Or an avalanche! Or Roman gladiators! Or an enormous ball held by mermaids, where there is an undercurrent (hee) of palace intrigue!) Basically, a poem with the plot of an opera (evil twins! Egyptian tombs! Star-crossed lovers! Tigers for no apparent reason!)"

The NaPoWriMo prompt is definitely something one could have fun with, and I really wish I could have worked "tigers for no apparent reason" into my poem, but I went in a slightly different direction, a political one, which is all too easy to do these days. It's sort of a darkly comic look at what have actually been some pretty ominous moments in the last couple of weeks. (By the way, the Roman numeral "section number" of this imagined epic is 468, the exact number of days since the beginning of this administration.)

Le Roi de l'Orange (Excerpt)
 
CDLXVIII.
 
And then, because he could not earn
the noble prize of peace,
the king went on a mad tirade:
“The dogs of war, release!
We’ll storm the evil empire
and we’ll attack the Persian!
It will be like a pleasure cruise—
we’ll call it an ‘excursion!’
By Xerxes’ toes, we’ll crush the foes,
and bomb them to the Stone Age!
I’ll use my bunker-buster bombs—
wait till you see their tonnage!”
 
He ordered up a fusillade
of missiles, drones and bombs,
that killed their leader and his staff,
but also kids and moms.
He bombed their military bases,
hospitals and schools,
to get them to kowtow to him,
but Persians are no fools.
They blocked the strait where oil ships pass,
to call the mad king’s bluff,
and when the price of petrol soared,
the people had enough.
 
“Let’s end this war!” they cried. “It’s wrong,
and what’s more, unprovoked!
Our king has lost his marbles and
the world thinks he’s a joke!”
But then l’Orange did double down,
and sent this ultimatum:
"I’ll end their civilization now—
oh boy, how much I hate ‘em!”
But now he’s reconsidered, and
the fearless leader speaks:
“Because it’s TACO Tuesday, I
will give them two more weeks!”
 
[Coming up next, CDLXIX: The Pope vs. The Dope]