WHEN I RETURNED

Tags

BREXIT, Britain, British, decline, Empire, Ending, entropy, poem, poetry, Postcolonial, postmodern

WHEN I RETURNED
“entrenched and calcifying
class stratifications”
Gary Younge

when I returned
everything was crumbling
but not in that happy
melt-in-the-mouth sort of way

a land of
broken statues

historical memories
grown ever more painful
with each passing year

once this
machine worked

once it ran on ahead
outstripped the pack
at full steam

but now how bleak
how dour
cement coloured skies
divulging near toxic rain

that somehow, magically,
stays within official limits
and so no one gets sick
no
discernible ailments

and there the images
that once rejuvenated
reminded us of
the great musical hall and
other popular traditions
feeding into
the great Beatlesque
transformations of identity

anarchy in the late 70s
along those stone cobbled streets
where my grandad
returned from war with
dream of starting a family

chipped, cracked
whose face is that
did they ever see this Britain, this
England coming

not just rejuvenated, but
rising from the dead
(form an
all-star dead rock band
with John and Jimmy and George
and Mary and Percy
who wrote such blistering
odes in mode
of truth to power)

but now
not a whimper of
that poetry

cannot call it
a wasteland because it’s all
too hypothetical, digital and
completely plasticated

no memory of
what went blitz as it
streaked across
the channel

what went bang and

what Guy Fawkes cracker could

remove every stone, every blade
of grass
the name of every city

those names whose esteemed truth you cling to
when theIr failures shone brighter
than the brightest searchlight

why we
need the darkness

for their
power to grow
and grow

empirically, imperially, universally,
exponentially

until the
bubble burst

so fatally
expand

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SOOT (MOGG’S VICTORIANS)

Tags

Britain, British, Conservative, History, identity, ideology, Jabob Rees-Mogg, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, satire, Tory, writing

SOOT (MOGG’S
VICTORIANS)

let’s sit down nicely
drink some tea
suck out of thumb
a history

so charming it reads
like a fantasy

or, aliternatively (for
an alternate history)
go down to the pub
called “the Victorian”
looks time of
Dickens (of “what
the Dickens”) but

was built in 1980
refurbished 2008
place where
you may
tuck into the old
cuisine, feel
the old ways

none of the early
industrial, capitalist soot
Lord Snooty
would be
having none of

NEW

Tags

corporate, economic, feudal, Humanity, Medieval, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, postmodern, satire, servitude

NEW

the new Medieval world
fully postmodern, fully feudal
no single, absolute authority
political or spiritual

just so many Divine Emperors
Godkings, ten-a-penny

and you
reborn into slavery,
resurrected under the
sign of the corporate logo
branded into
your flesh

no Christ
to save you

POEM ON WORKERS’ DAY

Tags

poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, ROME, slavery, slaves, socialism, socialist, Spartacus, workers

POEM ON WORKERS’ DAY

so I pulled into Rome
on workers day
to debate liberty
with some slave owners

wore red
which I had difficulty explaining
would be our colour

not the colour of Empire, of
its soldiers and legions

there, within earshot, a Thracian gladiator training,
his sharp Greek philosophical mind
listening to the debate
taking

as he dies on the cross of ultimate rebellion
all that was said to its logical conclusion

SALUTE

Tags

Britain, Colonialism, Ovid, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, post-colonial, ROME, satire, Virgil

SALUTE

that dress uniform
so ill-fitting
looks quite ridiculous
this moment in time

perhaps, it
never did fit, this
you must be prepared at least
to accept

as I write, poet stashed in a border province,
no gleaming Virginian golden Imperial Eagle
whose lines
out of marble chipped
with proposed gravitas

that I find
preposterous

which is what I suppose you would expect
from one lounging Ovidian, my verse sprawling
like a jump-up township, “informal settlement”

but you in your uniform
defending an honour synonymous
with carnage

your lies on this Continent
in this country alone

should cost you nothing less
than eternal damnation

but who
am I, are we
to judge,

as karma would have it, you judging yourselves
with terrible irony, worst
of condemnations

some literary scribe of

post-
colonial kind

drafting your epitaph
(the English
so powerful, revelatory,
beautiful)

just stand in your scarlet
and give the salute

CALIBAN’S ISLAND

Tags

BREXIT, Britain, CALIBAN'S, Colonialism, Empire, poem, poetry, postcolonialism, satire, Shakespeare

CALIBAN’S ISLAND

haunted by ancient Roman ghosts
first triumphant Empire, now back
to the dictator Caesar

mighty Britannia
stands alone

determined (yet scarcely able)
to resist a new dark ages of
its own making

the island
itself setting sail

ready, if needs be,
to comb the whole ocean
for trade and colonial conquest
searching for things in
their native habitat
to commandeer

paint with illusions, fictions
and shadows
dreams of

power
and glory
creatures to demonize

THE VIEW FROM MAHIKENG

Tags

BREXIT, Britain, Empire, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, satire, South Africa

THE VIEW FROM MAHIKENG

I’m laughing at Brexit
from Mahikeng, the town
where Empire
was almost lost

no longer the centre
of anything, pretty much now,

dust-devils in Autumn
and the stones
still lying pretty much
where they fell

sometimes you scratch around
you find an old Martini-Henry cartridge
or one from a lethal Boer rebel Mauser

how the mighty have fallen
those old Mauser rifles
until Brexit
they were the unfortunate truth
that threatened to
rewrite the book
take down the flag

IN EACH LINE

Tags

poem, Universe

IN EACH LINE

wave after
suicidal wave

a war
of Empire

to teach the world
discipline, duty, and, yes, beauty

a simple aesthetic yet
here
so deadly

blood in each line
of your superb haiku

SPARE THE ROD

Tags

macho, poem, poetry, pride

SPARE THE ROD

spare the rod
and spoil
the little
Dictator, Empire Builder,
Corporate capitalist

playing on his
abacus

balancing power, privilege, pound
profit
against each the

need to
inflict quite
necessary pain

EMPIRE POEM

EMPIRE POEM

I am Emperor
of nothing read

Mandarin of the power
that is entropy
is social
dissolution

this is my
box of
fabulous tricks

watch yourself
shuffled into the cabinet
(keeping your eyes
on my assistant
with the beautiful tits)

and
cadabraabra
you have
disappeared
(you vote
now quite worthless,
stripped of
safety net
too)

I do not
have the touch
however

so live
with your scrofula

nor do I
convert to
gold
with Midas-fingered
alchemy

no my touch
is dead
and unloving

is sandpaper skeletal

nothing there
for the taking
yet

I will
take all from you.