Britannias
What ho ! I’m Ali,
Born in Cairo –
True-blue British, doncha know ?
Like squire Sanjay –
Mumbai-bred,
As English as a phone box red.
And then there’s Chang,
From County Down,
By bowler hat and Chinatown.
And Elzbieta,
Glasgow gal,
As fish-and-chips as any pal,
And Welsh Pierre
Of Montreal,
So fluent in the bat-and-ball.
The best of British,
Tweeds and cap –
As much as any other chap.
Fascists
The Nazis used to be quite rare,
With few who earned the name –
But now it seems they’re ev’rywhere
And free speech is to blame !
These random people on the net
Who think they get a say –
I call them out as fascists, yet
Their views leap by the day
I put them down, but still them come,
Replete with facts and stats.
I can’t believe how many scum
Are lurking in the chats.
They should be rounded up, the lot,
And left to rot in Hell –
And if you disagree, a spot
Gets found for you, as well…
Lying in State
I fully admit, I don’t understand
This waiting in line.
Hours and hours, as if it’s a test,
Come rain or shine,
To be a part of history, they say,
To mark the moment –
To prove themselves her loyal subjects ?,
Or maybe beg atonement ?
I fully admit, I don’t understand,
As the World looks on –
We’re not all doing this !, I cry,
Till my voice has gone.
I scoff and rant and pity them,
But I’m one of a very few –
And nobody’s lis’ning to me, of course,
They’re all watching the queue.
I fully admit, I don’t understand,
And I never will.
I hope this brings about a change –
No more standing still.
But right now, the status is in the quo,
The ink won’t leave the pen.
I’ve never felt so alien
To my fellow countrymen.
God save the Queen (but the Devil take the Plebs)
And so it begins, the Toady Race,
The public performance of grief –
Saccharine and suffocating,
Preaching your True Belief !
Posters declaiming official tears,
Tributes gushing with pomp.
Change the stamps and coins and anthem –
Such a jolly romp !
Get that sobbing good and loud,
And really have a bawl !
Hope your knees are in good shape
For the curtsy and the crawl.
Show yourself sufficiently sad
For ev’ry arse-licked toast –
Bow and scrape and bob and tug
Till the knighthood’s in the post.
Vive la République !
In other news, I see we’re going to get a bank holiday for the funeral. But we will continue not to receive a bank holiday for Election Day. Priorities, I guess…
#NotMyKing
Breezeblock & Plasterboard
I live in the suburbs
In a box made of ticky-tacky –
It’s small and it’s samey,
And won no award.
It’s not to conform,
And it’s not to be strange or wacky,
I live here because here
Is all I can afford.
I grew up around here,
Then I went to the university
And I came out with a large debt
And I found my first job.
And it paid not a lot,
Except for in uncertainty,
So I tried for a mortgage
For a key on a fob.
There’s a Barratt, there’s a Redrow
There’s a Wimpey, there’s a Jubilee.
Where’s the woodland, where’s the meadow ?
Oh, please don’t ask me.
But all they would give me
Was a box made of ticky-tacky,
But it’s dry and it’s plumbed-in,
If no pleasure-dome.
I raised up my children
And worked as a gopher-lacky,
Trying to get by
And make it a home.
So spare me your distaste
How I went to the university –
And spare me your prejudice
Of me and my peers.
I don’t have your millions
Or a co-operative nursery,
Yet I struggled and I made it
Despite all your sneers.
Blame the council, blame the builder,
Blame the bubble, blame the rising-sea.
If it all seems out of kilter,
Then please don’t blame me.
This is a response to the song Little Boxes by Malvina Reynolds.
Haram
Strange to think The Satanic Verses
Was ever even published at all.
And following the subsequent string of hearses,
Who would dare now have the gall ?
I don’t like it myself, it’s not for me,
But that’s hardly the point –
It’s even more vital we keep speech free
When it puts us out-of-joint.
But the terrorists have won, we all self-censor,
And now the Left have caught the bug –
Trading-in Marx for Marks & Spencer
And sweeping their principals under the rug.
The truth is, they admire the power
To shut down speech and cancel voices –
They’ve fatwa-envy, to make us all cower
For daring to stray from the authorised choices.
Well, I’m just gonna come right out and say it –
Islam and Woke are each a toxic trigger.
Not all their adherents, let’s not overplay it,
But enough, who pursue their commandments with vigour.
So we really need to come down hard on apologists,
Stop their political victim-blaming,
As they unironic’ly draw-up blacklists,
Shutting-down speech while fanning the flaming.
But now we’re shocked, that someone attacked
The one we attacked with ferocity,
Named and paraded and finally sacked
For the sin of secular blasphemy.
As we clutch our pearls and wring our hands,
At what could drive this murderous spate.
Then we push to get a comedian banned
For saying the Koran is full of hate.
To be clear, the Bible is equally hate-filled – but most Christians have the decency to be embarrassed by theirs. Sometimes this shame is subconscious, but even the most fundamental literalists will inwardly wince if you bring up –
Job 1 (God giving his approval for Satan to kill Job’s ten children for the sake of a bet), or Numbers 25:6-8 (Phinehas murders a inter-racial couple and God is appeased and stops his plague), or Psalms 137:9 (happiness comes from dashing the babies of your enemies against the rocks), and let’s not forget Deuteronomy 20:10-14 (when beseiging a city, offer peace – if they surrender, enslave them, if they resist, slaughter every male (even the male babies), and take the women and girls for yourselves) –
and mutter something about context, and ‘appropriate for their own time’, and change the subject to the New Testament – while ignoring Colossians 3:22-24 (slaves, obey your masters !).
Get Up Off Our Knees
Another atrocity, another round of blame,
With the righties claiming they’re all the same,
And the lefties burying their heads in their guilt,
And our knee-jerk laws that are jerry-built.
Another outrage, another assault,
And we all us know who’s really at fault,
But none of us will say –
Mohammad. And Jesus. And Shiva. And Yahweh.
And the dozens of others, monsters all –
Let’s stop the worship, let them fall.
Just why are we honouring the afterglow
From the morals of how many centuries ago ?
But no, don’t ban them, not a single sect –
Just stop any pretence of honour or respect.
Laugh at their gods, like we did before,
To Zeus and Baal and Ra and Thor.
The Tolpuddle Tree
The tallest, broadest sycamore in Dorset
Is a stately tree –
Beloved by Lords and Parliament,
A pillar of society –
He’s tended by The National Trust,
As English as can be,
In a village with a funny name,
And a bloody history.
Yet sycamores are not a native,
Bringing European fruits
To challenge all the local trees
With non-conforming shoots.
These upstarts will not know their place,
Their seeds are new recruits,
And down into the bedrock
They have planted creeping roots.
Yet, for all their canopy may shield,
And union hold fast,
They do not live so long, these trees,
Their shelter cannot last.
And though the status quo may praise,
When safely in the past,
They’ll gladly chop his children down
And root him out at last.
Queen Bee
Deep in the palace, centre of her nest,
The bloated Queen holds court.
She pops out underlings, spreading her essence
Who scuttle-out backwards from her regal presence.
Safely cocooned from the drones and the rest,
And only meeting with the better sort –
And she fills-up her hive with honeypots of gold,
While expendible subjects shiver in the cold.
Long to Reign o’er Us
Britons, do your duty !
Prop-up the status quo !
Bow to our pirate booty
We pillaged long ago.
Plebs and oiks and hoi pilloi,
Respect who runs the show –
You won’t get far as a barrow boy,
It’s down to who-you-know.
So choke on bunting,
Drown on gushing,
Progress-stunting,
Freedom-crushing,
We know the state’s a travesty,
But one in which we’re very rich –
So gawd bless her majesty,
To whom our fortunes hitch.
For she’s the thread within the stitch-up,
She’s the empire in the kitch-up,
Casts her glamour to bewitch-up,
All across the British Isles.
She’s blue in blood and politics,
Behind-the-scenes to rig the fix –
Then waving for the latest pics,
All innocence and smiles.
Britons, do your duty !
Bail-out our busted banks,
And curtsy to our snooty
From your starved and unwashed ranks.
Jocks and Taffs and chippie Chavs,
And all you bolshy cranks –
Just be content with what you have,
And show some proper thanks.
With boot-licking,
Forelock-tugging,
Heel-clicking,
Flag-hugging.
It’s both a farce and tragedy,
A dirty-money laundromat –
So gawd bless her majesty
The lizard in the hat.
For she’s the face upon the money,
She’s the accent in the plummy,
She’s the knighthood in the chummy,
All across the British Isles.
And after her, we get her son,
And on and on till kingdom come –
You’d better learn, that’s how it’s done,
So tighten-up those smiles.
I freely admit that I was feeling pretty angry when I wrote this. I have taken a calmer take here. And although I’m no fan of flag-hugging, neither do I totally despise it either, as I’ve laid out here and here.
Rhyming Couplets 