Step closer and watch the great Wheel turn,
a burnished disc like Achilles’ Shield,
etched with destinies you never chose.
Hear it hum with the weight of unseen hands,
those who tilt the world from gilded towers.
Will it land on fire and falling cities,
the roar of war pounding through your veins?
Will it grant you calm years and open fields,
quiet days where grandchildren bloom like spring?
Will you drift through life unnoticed,
a steady ember neither bright nor cold?
Or blaze out fast in a flash of glory,
your name echoing long after bone to dust?
Spin after spin, the question tightens:
will history carve you into its marble,
or swallow you whole among the uncounted?
But mind the truth behind the carnival lights –
you are not the one who sets it spinning.
The odds are rigged by billionaires and boardrooms,
by oligarchs with gold-laced fingers,
by shysters selling futures they never pay,
by CEOs and crooked kings of state.
Step right up, they beckon with polished smiles,
pretending fate is fair and open-handed.
Yet the Wheel knows better, and so do you:
the choices of life aren’t always our own,
and the world turns on a tilt not of our making.
Still the Shield circles, gleaming –
dare you look away as it decides?
