Commoners like us (an acrostic)

Commoners like us (an acrostic)

Theology strives to solve religion,

Rocket fire furiously falls from the sky

Utopian dreams, are a fool’s mission;

Monsters maim millions, school children die,

Pummelled by patriot missiles misaimed;

Accidents happen, the offender shrugs;

Naturally terrorists will be blamed;

Doubtless the lies will be swallowed by mugs.

Never again, again, and again:

Ever get the feeling you’re being cheated?

The reels are rolling, the theatres remain,

All the old films are being repeated.

“Never again”, wrote Meir Kahane,

(Yitzhak Lamdan coined that phrase),

Archaic laws in biblical vein,

Hark back to make believe Halcyon days.

Unlawful settlers, occupation,

Aided and abetted, often by

Rightist elites, of fascist persuasion:

Epstein associates, easy to buy;

Callous, filthy-rich, paedophile

Rapist, self-entitled, feckless

Idiots photographed and kept on file:

Multiple heirs, in states of undress,

Invested in power and wealth creation;

Narcissists, basking in immunity,

Allied with leaders of a rogue nation,

Lying and killing with impunity;

Silencing critics via default

Accusations of prejudice;

Naysaying every truthful report,

Decrying their murderous recklessness.

Gone is international law

Ensuring advances in view of world peace;

Nuclear arms threaten once more,

Oligarch wealth is on the increase,

Crimes against humankind’s normalised,

Industrial prisons are amply built,

Demagogues, rarely criticised,

Answer to no one, despite their guilt;

Like mafia bosses, Dons by name;

Monetary rule’s the name of their game;

Arrogant arseholes united are they;

Nourished by greed, impervious to shame;

Insatiable beasts; and we are their prey.

All but obliviously lost at sea,

Commoners like us, one day will be

Sharing a dinghy, literally.

Take Down the Flags, Hang Flowers Instead

Take Down the Flags, Hang Flowers Instead

Early one morning, in my dressing gown,

I, having opened the curtains, espied

A Union Jack, hanging upside down,

Atop the disused old lamppost outside;

And later that day, I saw many more,

Hanging from nigh every post in the street;

I strolled on, perplexed: what were they all for?

A celebration of Windsor’s elite?

A final I’d missed, that England had won?

Impossible news, of a Brexit deal,

Highly beneficial to everyone?

Or an armed forces memorial drill,

In remembrance, announced by a bugle?

Ours is a garrison town after all.

Or, was it a foolish interpretation

Of patriotism: a misguided

Zealousness, fuelled by misinformation,

Nostalgia, prejudice, lopsided

Media, gullibility, frustration;

A magnate manufactured culture war;

A celebration of tax evasion,

Greed, billionaires, the broken rule of law;

Repeated use of the adjective, “GREAT”

Applied to a past that was anything but,

When wealthy landowners governed the state,

Purses were jealously guardedly shut,

To your GREAT GREAT grandfathers and mothers;

Their sons and daughters, sisters and brothers?

Pondering this, a ladder I ascended,

Cut the ties; and the “Made in China” flag,

Crowning the obsolete post, descended,

Landing beside a council black bin-bag

And some plastic flowers, that, for all I knew,

Could have been made in the same factory

Yet, being prettier than red white and blue,

Beautiful even, comparatively,

I hung them and made a statement that day,

With a view to, maybe starting a trend,

And after the colours were thrown away,

I hoped that mine had been left till the end,

If only to sow a seed in your head:

Take down the flags, hang flowers instead.

If Souls Were Fish (For Whom it May Concern)

If Souls Were Fish (or, To Whom it May Concern)

If souls were fish, yours would be a minnow,

Residing in a waste infested lake;

Or, a paedocypris, in a slow-

-Flowing, brown stream of raw-sewage outbreak.

If hearts were sand, yours would be a particle

Far smaller than a quark; impossible,

To view, through all but the most powerful

Lens; and even then, barely visible.

If minds were spheres, yours would be a highly

Toxic, orange gas giant, more poisonous

Than sulfur mustard and reliably

Likely to wipe-out every one of us.

If life was a dream, yours would trump those

Of all the scapegoats, living guardedly,

In a world where prejudice daily grows,

Along with division and disharmony.

(It Feels Like) I'm Losing the Human Race

(It Feels Like)I’m Losing the Human Race

It feels like I’m losing the human race;

Struggling each day to keep up with the pace;

Inwardly hearing, “Nice guys finish last”,

I disagree with that voice from past:

Vitriolic, vexed, not especially nice,

And sceptically cynical of advice,

I’m a first world problem researcher at best,

Prone to wrong answers and failing the test.

Modern technology’s over my head,

(Though nightly I read a Kindle in bed);

Banking on the internet’s not for me;

I don’t want to live in a world cash-free;

And whatever cryptocurrency is,

Along with AI, I’d give it a miss

If it wasn’t for the job stealing bot

On the bank helpline, more often than not.

Alexa: where are all the high street shops?

How come the Amazon van never stops

Long enough for me to answer the door?

Could it be the boss, chasing evermore

Growth, at the cost of working conditions,

Pensions, and permanent job positions?

How long will it be before AI replaces

White collars, suits, commuters, briefcases?

And why is everything so expensive?

Full time employees, struggling to live

Has been normalised, so it seems to me,

Regardless of high or low GDP;

Alexa: what are the benefits of wealth

If not taxed for housing, services, health?

And why’s the worlds’ richest man such a twat?

“I’M NOT QUITE SURE HOW TO HELP YOU WITH THAT”.

She puts out the light, upon my request;

I lie abed, reading non-fictional text;

It’s a book about a dystopian

Nightmare, or maybe a Utopian

Heaven, depending on your point of view;

But whether too bad or good to be true,

I wake up, with the Kindle on my face;

It feels like I’m losing the human race.

Dead Meat in the Sheep Pen

 

Dead Meat in the Sheep Pen

Britain’s being colonised

Says a tax evader

The cognitively compromised

Revere the rage-bait trader

Part time MPs buck the trend

Hold a party rally

Dead meat in the sheep pen

Blindness in the alley

Ultra-rightist boorish rot

Flies across the pond

Citizen beware if you’re not

Blue eyed white and blond

A fraud is presently your friend

Votes are needed now

Dead meat in the sheep pen

Charlatans chase power

Racism is back in fashion

Ostriches say never

Hatred is a virtuous passion

Bigotry’s deemed clever

Trump Farage Orbán Le Penn

Linking form a chain

Dead meat in the sheep pen

Alarmists warn in vain

Furnaces turned up to max

Fracking in the field

Pseudoscientists twist the facts

Forests cease to yield

Cowering politicians bend

Billionaires hoard wealth

Dead meat in the sheep pen

Working class ill health

Raise the Colours PRATriots

Climbing up a ladder

Judas Iscariots

Making plans with MAGA

Here’s the key to number ten

Incumbents all but saying

Dead meat in the sheep pen

Democracy decaying

Elitists call for civil war

Tech bros salivate

Open season on the poor

Ever shrinking state

Sex offending least of men

Welcomed by the King

Dead meat the sheep pen

Led there by a sting

Amelia

Amelia

Some gamers came upon a wet dream:

A pretty young lady spouting a stream

Of nationalist nonsense, tinged with a hue

Of extremism, draped in red white and blue,

Which many a gamer took to be true;

Ignoring the prompts, they followed her cue.

Her popularity grew beyond measure;

Reverse engineered, a right-wing treasure,

Stolen from Pathways, adopted by X,

This purple haired meme of the fairer sex,

Is a mascot for the usual suspects:

Nigel’s, and Tommy’s, devoted subjects.

She once was an educational tool,

But racists are neither gothic nor cool;

Her clueless designers failed to prevent

The spread of disease, Reform represent,

Amelia deemed a gift heaven sent,

The party incumbent, looks to be spent.

Tel-Aviv Tommy

Tel-Aviv-Tommy

A rightist, racist, nationalist, jobby,

football thug with fascist views,

bankrolled by the Zionist lobby,

gets the gushing gullible gobby;

look who’s made the national news:

a rightist, racist, nationalist, jobby,

prone to violence, horribly yobby,

fake befriender of Christians and Jews,

bankrolled by the Zionist lobby,

and a Nazi-saluting, slobby,

tweeting testament to ket abuse;

a rightist, racist, nationalist, jobby;

an Oswald Mosely poor man's copy,

with a permanently shortened fuse,

bankrolled by the Zionist lobby;

appeals to the orange Mr Blobby;

Tel-Aviv-Tommy, stirrer of shit stews;

a rightist, racist, nationalist, jobby,

bankrolled by the Zionist lobby.