Something Fishy
I know I’m just a killjoy,
But today I have to ask,
Can the News retain its dignity
And not let slip the mask ?
Best leave the April fooling
To those more befitted to the task.
But then, I guess I am a fool
To hold to my belief –
When the News has always lied to us
And manufactured grief.
Moral panics, dirty tricks,
Spaghetti Trees and San Serriffe.
The High Road from Envy to Candour
The flourishing show-off their fruits,
As they always do,
From star to plutocrat.
And I want to hate their loot –
But then I hear you
Saying I’m better than that.
Not better than them, no,
They clearly are winning,
And I couldn’t compete if I tried.
But I mustn’t get low
If I want to keep grinning –
I mustn’t give in to my cynical side.
The skilful exploit the thing they do,
Create a buzz,
With even better times to come.
Now the world’s not fair, it’s true,
It never was,
But is success then zero-sum ?
You always told me, don’t despise,
Don’t bitch and sleight –
To be myself, and not some copycat.
But dammit, it’s so hard to rise
Above the spite,
It’s so hard to be better than that.
Don’t snub them, don’t hate them,
Don’t read the bad press,
Don’t seek out their scandal, don’t kiss them and tell.
But call them, and truely congratulate them
For their great success
Which they handle so well.
I can hear your voice admonishing me
For unworthy bile
And poisonous chat.
I hate that you’re right, but we must let it be –
So paste on a smile
And be better than that.
I want to scream, and curse my fate,
And spit their names –
But dammit, I can’t give in now –
It hurts to be considerate,
But paranoid games
Are indulgences that I cannot allow.
Don’t suck-up and don’t condemn,
Let it go,
Don’t measure myself with where they’re at.
I’ll never be better than them,
I know,
But at least I can be better than that.
Reflections on the Imperial War Museum’s Great War Gallery
Is the purpose of a museum
To tell a story or show-off its wares ?
Poking around the bowels of Bedlam,
I started to question theirs.
Crammed-in from a lack of space,
(A bit like the trenches, but only a bit),
I started to notice the absences,
The parts they couldn’t manage to fit –
The lack of horses, for instance,
Or the lack of Colonial troops in the ranks,
Or the life in the Jerry’s trenches,
Or even that much about the Yanks.
It was, in the end, not a history,
But a series of stories of artefacts –
More could be added, but as modern props,
With the sense-of-fakeness this attracts.
The trouble, perhaps, was with the curators
One hundred-plus years ago,
Collecting what was seen as significant
So soon after the show.
We might now wish they’d chosen diff’rent,
And the future might want diff’renter yet –
But if they ain’t got it, they cannot display it,
So this is the War that we get.
Menin Gate, 8pm
We, the onlookers, dressed for Summer,
Less of a troop and more of a pack.
Shins and forearms and heads uncovered –
Only the jackdaws are dressed in black.
Partly honouring, partly gawking,
English voices amiably talking,
Not many present are younger than fifty –
One or two pause to read the plaque.
Officials in blazers, though we’re well-behaved.
Squaddies’ fatigues, their shoulders say Dutch,
Though I swear their “left-right-left” is in English –
The crowd wear no medals – would that be too much ?
The towers of names are columns of debt,
Bearing down, by rank before alphabet,
In a random sample, I look for my own
In the Surreys and sappers and serjeants and such.
Suddenly, a hush, an announcement by speaker,
Telling we must not talk or applaud.
A trio of buglers – was that the Last Post ?
Then a soldier steps up, a little over-awed.
“They shall grow not old” he reads,
His accent heavy, and yet succeeds
To draw from us a shared Amen:
“We shall remember them”, these Brits abroad.
The bugles again, and wreaths are laid,
The squad march off in the evening sun,
And suddenly ev’rything melts into chatter –
We mill for a while, but the service is done.
The road reopens, the traffic drives through,
We pose for a final selfie or two,
But we’ve far too many atrocities to remember,
To focus on only one.
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
(In reply to Little Boxes by Malvina Reynolds)
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.
Alas, all they sold 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.
Haram
Strange to think The Satanic Verses
Was ever even published at all.
And following from the 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 zealots 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 their authorised choices.
Well, I’m just gonna come right out and say it –
Islam and Woke are a toxic trigger.
Not all their adherents, let’s not overplay it,
But enough, who pursue the 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.
So 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 an 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” – I think we know what that means…)
They may 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 !).
Rhyming Couplets 