A 19-year-old acolyte of E-
lon Musk known online as “Big Balls”
now roams the State Department’s marble halls,
a Tadzio to the Aschenbachian spree
of absurd elders aged past dignity,
hair-plugged, paunched, and jowled, howling at the walls,
whose own grown children rarely take their calls,
desiring feelings once-felt that now flee
across the lovesick waters of a clogged canal—
it does your bidding, but it is a dream—
you cannot re-become a callow youth
by hiring one to bust up the banal
dull business of DC, though it may seem
you can. It’s hot today. You’re long in the tooth.