After a Week

A Work in Progress
112

So Caesar’s crossed the Rubicon again

Gone off to war to escape the files

Moving the needle off the Epstein track

A long-playing record it keeps coming back

A war going well allows days of distraction

After a week a war starts to smell

bodies buried under rubble bulldozed aside

burnt buildings still standing where no-one resides

Slowly Pam Bondi drips more Trump data out

A woman in a real time reality show cast

With an eye on what comes after not what went before

The way she’s playing it is strictly film noir

Now she’s subpoenaed what will she say?

Will she open the floodgates let the media play

Releasing everything including some sex tapes

Reminding the public of E. Jean Carroll’s rape

After a month a war doesn’t end well

One way to stop it might be an impeachment

This isn’t a short war they’re going full bore

For Trump this war is an exit door

 

Packaged as a video game played out on TV

Huge explosions death and destruction 

The Russians help Iran target American troops

Gulf State waterworks while losing territory Ukraine recoups

A war of attrition has now begun

A race to produce the cheapest drone

No thought of we the people

Our fate’s cast in stone

Bards of old in Ireland’s green hills

Once called an end to the battles below

When common sense and chivalry made men better

Not influencer go getters and media in fetters

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                      2026

Where’s Catullus?

A Work in Progress

111

Where’s Catullus?

He’s gone all in and taken us with him

We’re all at war 

It’s just like him

A big distraction

Caesar’s attacked Persia

Has he gone too far?

You know he wants to go further

Alexander the Great 

Went that way

Next came Afghanistan

Then came India

Till his troops turned for home

On his way back

He died 

Leaving an empire

For Rome to conquer

Once again

Will he lose his legions

Who can tell us?

Will he lose elections

Who can tell us?

Will the Senate impeach him

Rescue the country?

Where’s Catullus?

Who can tell us?

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                  2026

For Sue

Catcherside: by Ian Scott, played by Nick Leeming

First footsteps on the flagstones then the pumping of the drones

It’s Catcherside the piper plays up high there in the stones

Watching the sea’s incoming waves but his thoughts are far away

Crossing over to life from death his mind has gone astray

Taken by the melody he’s walking by the sea

Caring all the time for the changing of the tide

Till that moment in the music when its suddenly lost its way

Confronting loss when everything’s a path that leads away

New moons will wax and wane and tides will ebb and flow

That’s not how love doth intermesh and permeate a soul

Which wanders off and leaves you alone with just her name

How love can never leave you music makes you whole again

Then footsteps on the flagstones sudden silence of the drones

It’s Catcherside the piper played up high there in the stones

Music makes you whole again cheers departing souls

Memory entertains again music starts anew

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                       2026