The Emperor's Great Wall

Administration officials on Thursday confirmed that they were looking at a range of government accounts that Trump potentially could tap into for the Wall, but would not comment specifically on which projects were being eyed.  LATimes.

Long ago in ancient lands an emperor decreed

that out of bricks and sticks and tricks a wall must rise with speed.

His counselors, they scratched their heads and faintly wondered why

such a wall must be put up until it reached the sky.

The emperor did not enjoy the doubts of any servant.

He kicked them and he cussed at them in language that was fervent:

"Don't you know that foreign hordes are right this minute waiting

to overwhelm my empire -- a nasty mess creating?"

And so the retinue of He Who Must Be Compensated

fanned out to find the manpower to make his project fated.

Any man found idling in doorway or saloon,

any woman peeling carrots or the sharp cardoon,

children playing marbles -- all were swept up in a trice

and put in cells of cockleshells, to live off prunes and rice.

Manacled together, they were marched out to the site

of the nascent border wall to work from morn til night.

 But where to find the funding for the bricks and thick cement?

The servants of the emperor did not have one red cent.

Deputizing publicans, they sent those greedy pigs

out to tax entire worlds of cloth and tools and figs.

But that's not all these creatures did, to finance that great wall;

they raided all departments of the government, y'all.

The navy lost its rudders and the army its puttees;

the scribes had no more pencils and accountants no more cheese.

All the schools were shut down, so their funding could be swiped 

for the emperor's great wall, which now was really hyped.

Calamity was prophesied if building was delayed;

recruiters signed up volunteers -- by using a sharp blade.

The towns were all deserted and the farms were fallow all --

just so that the emperor could have his toxic wall.

Commerce at a stand-still, and the temples in decay;

the land turned back to jungle in a verdant disarray. 

 Now while the people slaved upon the wall in subjugation,

strangers from the East and West began a sly migration.

Taking over farms and shops, restoring many homes,

they settled in quite cozily -- like little garden gnomes.

So set upon his sacred wall, the emperor ignored

his people's anger and their rising temper and discord.

At last full civil war broke out, and none were spared the sword --

so ev'ryone was gutted like an overripened gourd.

When the pall of battle cleared the emperor alone

survived upon his blood-stained and near-splintered royal throne.

The wall had tumbled down around his ears -- he gave a sigh,

and then far in the distance his new people did descry.

With a grave panoply of his solitary person

he marched up to his newbies (all their happiness to worsen.)

"I am your emperor supreme!" he gabbled at their faces.

"Full of strong authority and self-effacing graces."

The newbies didn't care a fig for this benighted dummy;

they kept on with their singing, swinging, and playing of gin rummy.

"I command you to begin the digging of a ditch . . . "

he cried, but then they cut him down -- that sorry son of a . . .gun.