The puck hit him
Square in the facemask
A one hundred mile per hour slapshot
And it really rung his bell
The world shattered for him
Spun like an off-centre top about to fall
Vision blurred
And he felt a little sick to his stomach

Like he felt during the weird, disparate moments
Of the past weeks and months and years
That flashed through his mind
As visual and aural nightmares

There was the candidate gloating
About sexual assault
And getting elected anyway
Though it all should have ended
Before it even started
In an open mic moment

And an administrative error
That sends a man to a foreign torture chamber
And making no effort to bring him back
Or even apologize
A man who already can only be counted
As one among thousands
Soon tens of thousands
And how many more?
Only history puts an upper limit

The lie that no judge has the authority
To adjudicate the actions of a president
Who can simply ignore the law

“Long live the King”
He proclaimed with a ridiculous faked cover
Straight from the halls of the White House
After he went after a city
For the temerity to write
Its own traffic laws

This “leader of the free world”
Promises to annex one sovereign neighbour
Though he needs nothing it has
Run a hostile takeover on another
As if a landmass were a corporation ripe with assets
And send troops to take a canal
Because, well, it used to be his

There he is
He and his orange smirk
Swearing oaths
He would soon break
As if epithets and slanders
Surrounded by billionaires
Many with their own agendas
Catalogued in a plan for 2025
Serviced by their sycophantry
To an emerging despot

One is also a gloater
Who takes a chainsaw
And a woodchipper
To entire agencies
And the tens of thousands
Who’ve worked to make them
The envy of so many
And to the tens of millions
They serviced
Then whines for all to see
When the millions
Stop buying his shit
Both product and actions
And set his world on fire

Then yesterday
A tablet of tariffs
Against every trading partner
Friends, allies, enemies alike
Without cause
Without reason
But to a great effect
All can see coming
But the self-styled King
The despot

Now today
The stock market whirls
As its unsteady feet
Fall from beneath it

As does our goaltender
Who slumps forward
Falling toward unconsciousness
While a thousand more absurdities
Flash through his mind
Before his facemask again
Is crushed by its contact with the ice

And then there is darkness