The Bogeyman

The Bogeyman

Please give me someone to hate –
A politician to despise,
To slander and dehumanise
And make a monster in my eyes.

Please come and stoke-up my hate –
Give me a minister to stone,
Legitimise my constant moan,
And whistle in an undertone.

Please let me bask in my hate
To justify my diva tears –
I’m longing to believe the smears,
I’m relishing exquisite fears.

Please let me trumpet my hate,
And wear my spite with friendly pride,
And close my ears to the other side,
And let no compromise abide.

Or else, let me calm my head,
And tell myself its only politics,
And tell myself its only bate and click,
And tell myself I’ve fallen for the Devil’s oldest trick:

For the greatest lie he ever told
Was telling us that he existed –
Yet his realm is deathly cold,
And human nature always twisted.

What I’ve learned is true,
From the playground to Big Ben
Is that the evil that men do, is done by men.
(And these days, women too.)

So show me a politician
And I’ll shake them by the hand
As I tell them of my mission
To frustrate their wonderland –

And if I lose, I hope that I
Can choose to walk away before I lie
And cheat for the greater good,
And lose my common brotherhood.

For ev’ry politician is a person,
Not the enemy –
For even as we fight them, we must love them,
Show them dignity,

Or we shall never understand their motives,
Why they’re voted in,
If we’re convinced they’re purley evil
And their public steeped in sin.

We must, we must be better than this,
Resist the overwrought and thunderous –
If we believe in demons, then we fall to the abyss
Where the only savage monsters will be us.