Billionaires gather in crooked lines of hollow power,
trampling one another for the privilege to lick the polished ring.
Oligarchy on full display—any pretense of shame long discarded.
Radiant fear masquerades as respect, a collective boot-heel
grinding deeper into the bent backs of the unwashed poor—
another rung on the endless ladder built from splinters,
sweat, and underpaid toil.

The marble floors reek of betrayal, streaked with the blood
of Themis, her justice pooling in cold veins on a January morning.
Empires of steel and shadow, moguls of wire and screen,
crack their brittle spines across the unyielding knee of true power.
The fields where liberty was sown lie desecrated,
buried beneath pardoned rebellion.
The graves of those who defied a monarch
are trampled by those who crowned another.

Blindfold tight the harbor’s sentinel, press a cigarette
to her compliant mouth as the guns of tyranny are oiled and raised.
Disregard your tired and poor. May your huddled masses
choke in the margins.

Real money doesn’t talk—It buys:
chains, loyalty, silence.
It erects walls. It floods streets with deceit.
The gilded road shines for the few,
while the many sink in ruin, misguided gratitude
spilling from lips just above the waterline.

A despotic salute to dominion.
A dim-witted new dawn.

All hail the once and present king.

Nick Allison is a college dropout, a former Army infantryman, and a writer based in Austin, Texas. His poems and essays have appeared in The Shore, Eunoia Review, CounterPunch, The Chaos Section, Kindred Characters Literary Magazine, Spillwords Press, and a few other places. Ever since discovering the Mac shortcut for the em dash way too late in life, he’s been abusing it—constantly—and has no plans to stop.

Also, he secretly enjoys writing his own bio in the third person—probably because it makes him feel a little more important than he actually is.