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.

On His Majesty’s Service

The spy cried as he killed her,
But the job had to be done.
A shame, but the nation’s guardians
Must sometimes use the gun.
She wasn’t an enemy agent,
Just an unintended friend –
Precisely the kind of citizen
He’d promsed to defend.
A bystander who stood in the wrong place,
Open eyes in a pretty face,
A mouth that might just blow the case.
He wept for her at the end.

Threefold Commandments

Hear me now, for this is wisdom,
Handed down the generations:
This is where the rule is from
That founds all laws and inspirations.
Thrice they spake a noble precept,
Thus salvation’s road is three-stepped.

Firsly: be a better neighbour
Loving all the world as brothers.
Second: we must welcome labour –
Work is virtue like no others.
Thirdly comes a code most shapely
(Though just what, I own, escapes me.)

Therefore, speak unto all fellows
Honest words – no slanders mutter.
Never shirk to work the bellows,
Turn the earth, or churn the butter.
And that other thing: pursue it –
(What it says to do . . . well, do it.)

So behold: three schemes for living –
Three the ways to languor foil.
First there’s love, respect, forgiving –
Next there’s graft, provision, toil.
Third comes…what ?  Oh, saints preserve me !
(But I’m sure it’s mighty worthy.)

A point is all that you can score

These days, too many folks I know
At odds with the government,
Are praying for a time of woe
To piss into their tent.

Alas, folks like you, my friend,
So smug and all a-twitter –
Tribal to the bitter end,
And boy, are both sides bitter.

You long for power grids to fail,
For supermarket shelves to clear –
How joyfully you scoff and wail
That Armageddon’s here.

You cheer on the elderly to die
To make the balance tip,
And never stop to question why
You need such brinkmanship.

When did you become such arseholes ?
When did you become such bores ?
If we’re descending into farce,
Then the fault is equally yours.

Look, I don’t like the Government either,
But there they are, by public vote.
And someone has to break this fever,
While the others point and gloat.

If times get hard, as you prophesise,
Will you come down to help us through ?
Can you still be a friend who tries
To douse the flames and build anew ?

And I’m sorry I called you an arsehole –
We neither side is right or wrong.
So can we keep our self control,
And compromise to get along ?