HOGARTH
we don’t need no Hogarth
we got our
magic lantern
we can watch moving
pictures all night
all day
can live another world
just sitting, lying here
but Hogarth
would have nailed you
to his wall
would have
put you
in a gallery
captured you
every whim
and wile
with his
unflattering eye
and yet
no space for him
on our street today
no place for
an artist of
jos kind
the broadsheets
blew them
blasted
quite away
before
he could grab them
perfectly them
by the Grub Street
skewer them
by the Fleet ditch
his century seems so far away
but: fake news,,, false
Enlightenment
Pope splattering and splashing
up his wall
there is a better
kind of
satire
he would argue
one whose allegory is
that painful fall
from hubris to
social destruction
****
Oh the vanity of it
how those faces in the portraits
long to
burst your
bubble
fix
your lottery
have long foreseen
the financial calamity of your burst bubble
the roast beef of England
now where did that go?
where did it disappear to?
If I’m not
much mistaken guv’nor
they not be eating that
down Gin Lane
just Grady scraps of fried chippy
wrapped in
a tabloid page
and a fop
to rule us
who would have thought it
those old laughed-at stereotypes
back with a vengeance
bawd is bitch to your
ramshackle kingdom, M’lud
in Bedlam you
can be committed for
satire, irony’s
incurable disease
snap, crackle,
pop go our rights, pop
goes the economy
but we have free
speech, right to
stone
in the media
stone
on the streets
don’t be like evangelical Jesus
rushing to throw the first one
remember
the fool will
always be with us
the fools not grown
much bigger
just
more loud
so
don’t put up
bunting
don’t go
to town
if Hogarth’s spirit is
with us, resurrected,
walks amongst us
who can tell
what he’s
bringing down