Wrote this poem while mucking horse paddocks in a windstorm on the first day of the Second Gulf War, in foresight of the Opium & Oil Wars that have brought nations to their knees, and may soon destroy Western Civilization forever: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: Humpty Dumpty Redux (2003) Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall; But all the King’s horses and all the King’s men could not put Humpty together again. The King’s horses have hooves lacking fingers or thumbs; The King’s men wear gauntlets that make their hands numb: What a fool of a king to use horses and knights to try to put poor broken Humpty aright. So it took many years and cost millions of pounds before Humpty’s dead body was lain in the ground: And the money went neither to doctors nor wrights, but to the King’s horses and to the King’s knights. And the King’s army grew far more vast than he dreamed for his eggshell-rebuilding-failure scheme: And in every which Nation that sat on the wall the King propped up a Humpty whom he could control. Then he slew them, then starved them, then slew them again, while profiting gratefully from their disdain: Then he paid all his horses and paid all his men to put these cracked Nations together again. But Nations have shells that cannot be repaired, and once they are conquered they know but despair: So happy may be the King’s horses and men; for they shall have war to wage ever again.