Oil is the drumbeat beneath every throne,
the pulse of a world that pretends it’s grown;
yet the Red Sea shivers, the tankers crawl slow,
and the Houthis, once distant, now steal the show.
A war once ignored in the Yemeni dust
now grips the globe in a tightening ******
for when drones arc out over shipping lanes,
the price of tomorrow runs hot in our veins.
Insurance climbs like a panicked tide,
ships reroute round Africa’s side;
the Straits of Hormuz, long feared, long known,
now find the Red Sea joining the throne.
Fuel spikes wildly from Seoul to Rome,
and every nation feels less at home;
the pumps run lean, the markets shake,
and the fragile promise of growth can break.
Russia, amused, counts every new buyer
a cold‑weather merchant stoking the fire;
as Europe and Asia, desperate for heat,
line up at the counter in reluctant retreat.
America’s hand, though trembling, is drawn:
Yemen’s dark hills may soon feel the dawn
of precision strikes in a perilous hour,
yet elections loom, and the cost is power.
For how does a president bomb and boast
when the midterms whisper from coast to coast?
How does a nation wage distant war
when its own reflection is cracked at the core?
Still the pressure builds like a tightening snare,
a global crescendo of smoke in the air;
each shipping lane trembling, each market afraid,
each leader aware of the price to be paid.
And so we ascend to the brink of the brink,
where nations lean forward but dare not blink;
for oil is the axis on which we spin,
and the world grows darker the thinner it’s been.
Whence do we go as the barrels run dry?
As the drones trace arcs in a reddening sky?
As the Houthis rise from the margins of maps
to pull at the threads of the world's collapse?
We go where the oil drum tells us to tread....
toward futures uncertain, toward fears long fed;
a world in crescendo, a crisis uncoiled,
all turning, still burning, on the price of oil?
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4 March 2026