SUICIDE

Tags

BREXIT, Britain, British, death, Ending, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, satire

SUICIDE

a country
committing suicide
but what
kind of
suicide is this
(for which they have
a new Ministry, new
Agency

new people with
mops and buckets
to come
clean up)?

I do not see
lemmings hurling themselves
into the ocean
striking out for
some shore we do
not see, yet there
in their imaginations

or alone, with saki,
steel and
every
step observed in
that ancient ceremony
since they
cannot deal
with their failure and
hence the shame

or
less
seppuku, less
lemming kamikaze

just the pills delivered
by shaking hand

pills
hoarded for this special moment
the only certainty left
in the
chaos of
this broken, inhuman,
collapsing world

AT A PINCH

Tags

Britain, British, Dominic Cummings, poem, poetry, The Devil

AT A PINCH

he spilled the salt
then threw
some
into my eye

a pinch, just
a pinch out of some
strange superstition

and all I was doing
was reading
his Facebook profile
and other stuff about
him I was surmising
looking
over his shoulder

that, at a pinch, I, Dominic,
might induce him
to vote for
me

help establish the
eternal reign
of my dark Kingdom

HERITAGE DAY

Tags

Britain, Colonialism, heritage, poem, poetry, South Africa

HERITAGE DAY

they have shaven and
shorn our heritage

smoothed out the collisions
made it respectable

I myself am
British South African
worst type possible
one whose ancestors
came here
to pick fights
take stuff
out of the ground

stuff that might
have made your
Heritage Day happier
given you a more
meet to braai
a few extra
dops

left you with
a home and a family
loved ones
to celebrate with

not starved in a ditch
where you are now

TABLOID TYPE

Tags

BREXIT, Britain, British, journalism, media, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, press, satire, tabloids

TABLOID TYPE

hewn out of
blocks of movable type

propagandists entire
purveyors of tripe

the mega-baron owned
scribblers of note

hacks of
savagery with
limited vocabulary
denizens
not
quite

more little
leviathans

tin potly infallible
port with the
truth

absolute
Quasimodo
Torquemadas
of the
public smear

humans from
Hell
I least
wish to
hear

TONGUE

Tags

BREXIT, Britain, British, Language, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry

TONGUE

Brexit
is
Brexit

and so
dog
licks its
arse

snake
swallows
its tail

but no
one
bites their
lightning
forked

soft and
agile

thick
and leathery

so proudly, sadly
unashamedly
English
tongue

AND SEVENTY-SEVEN

Tags

Britain, British, poem, poetry, satire

AND SEVENTY-
SEVEN

there’s a
skunk in
your hedge
fund

so phasers out
light sabres at
the ready

we need to defend
our little dying planet
against the
Evil Empire

if stun be
setting one

set all weapons
to setting
seven billion
and seventy
seven

COMMANDO

Tags

BREXIT, Britain, British, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, satire, wordplay

COMMANDO
(going commando)

classic displacement
said the
dormouse

(disappearing
into
the Hatter’s hat)

Red Queen, exercising her protocols,
heard someone with a
stethoscope
speaking German

tell her
that all the paradoxes in
her kingdom
come from dislocation

the world of 24 frames
per second
gone sky-high
on mise-
en- scene

cartoon characters
fully liberated from

every
repression

asleep on the benches
though ostensibly in command

NOBLESSE OBLIGE

Tags

Britain, British, class, poem, poetry, power, satire, surreal, wordplay

NOBLESSE OBLIGE

he drank an archduke
and then a
cocktail filled
with feathers

made light work
of the archbishop
with a
gambit
of a gimlet
that refused
a quick
recapture in
the cause of skewering
him
through

but those Kubrick skygod
eyes no longer
gleamed as if
De Beers had
polished them

golden boy
had begun
to
melt

his policies
so surreal

GOVE IS VISIBLE

Tags

BREXIT, Britain, British, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, satire

GOVE
VISIBLE

Gove is
visible from
space
but what
do aliens
make of that
face
more
eccentric
than Uranus

more phases
than the Moon

like some
baleful
block of
ice and
rock

he tracks way out
but
zooms

close in

no comet ever
so deadly yet
innocuous seeming

loaded with every disaster
comic and tragic, real
and imagined

most existential
of
ephemeral things

AROUND

Tags

BREXIT, Britain, British, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, satire, War

AROUND

fat men who
see themselves, wish
they were in uniform

cursing History that
they were spared
the horrors of war

how they hate it
if we impugn their
imagined valour,
tactical acumen

dodging the stones and
arrows
bullets and
bombs

that somehow still
seem to follow them around