Punch and Judy Man
The tide ebbs and flows in Clacton,
Waves advance, pause and then retreat,
Quite unmoved by human conceit
Enjoying the fresh air and fun.
It’s not beyond Westminster’s reach
The squabbling for office and place,
Where everyone’s more than one face.
There’s to be drama on the beach,
A show that’s seemingly funny
And yet is actually grotesque,
The character behind the mask
Only performs for the money.
Once you given all you can spare
You’ll find he is not really there.
D. A.
Penalties
Both captains of England beaming
Out through a betting shop window.
The trophy they hold’s just for show
To entice punters who’re dreaming
World Cup dreams. Footballing success
Against the odds: There is romance
And an outside gamble that chance
Might pay out, and so help to address
The piker’s parlous fiscal state.
Also, there’s national pride at stake,
All lost on a simple mistake;
Seeming perniciousness of fate.
Briefly, the optimism flows,
But then, the final whistle blows.
D. A.
Screenshots from Special Military Ops.
Blazing apartment block, then another
With the length of its east wall sliced away
Exposing bedrooms, beds just made today,
Lounges and kitchens exposed for weather
To make it worse. Child’s buckled tricycle,
One lone shoe, laces knotted in a bow,
From smouldering rubble pram handles show
No sign of humanity. A trickle
Of water from a fractured pipe, shopping
Trolley and a tail fin and an upturned
Turtle of a car crazy glazed and burned,
Thick smoke and dust and masonry dropping.
Once such a site has been cleared, what remains?
Real estate, investment, capital gains.
D. A.
Democracy?
Voters in rotten and pocket boroughs
Were bought and sold for beer, grace and favours,
The squire owned both hustings and sabres
Of the yeomanry; no voting errors
Then, with open ballots. The inducements
These days appear as misinformation,
Encouraging inchoate vexation,
Over stimulated by bombastic rants
Intended to raise the hackles and play
On prejudices of the disengaged,
And so the farce is promoted and staged,
The grand theatrics of democracy.
Should grace and favour of the public will
Falter, the state retains its sabres still.
D. A.
D. A.
Reformation
Maintaining ‘Socialism’ as watchword
Can seem unlikely, when realpolitik
Is succumbing to the three card trick
Of the slight of hand dealer in absurd
Demagogy, when the popular vote
Is placed on populist blandishments,
Falsified promises; reason relents
Its influence. Without considered thought
Reform, however tempting it appears,
Remains a mistaken gamble to make,
Especially with the future as the stake:
Gamblers regret can last for years and years.
There’s none as asleep as the mistaken,
Being so, so difficult to awaken.
D. A.
Patriotic States of Mind
Problem is not simply Zionism:
Nation states however constituted
Are, by definition, ill-reputed,
The foundation of discord and schism.
Meanwhile, picking on one to vilify
And then promoting another to toast
Is to risk taking route to holocaust,
In which not only the selected die.
Power may grow from the barrel of the gun,
But justice doesn’t, nor finds solutions,
As conflict grows from national illusions:
Poll the too many dead as to who’s won.
Patriotism might motivate crowds,
While patriotic flags turn into shrouds.
D. A.
Building for the Future
A venerable institution for sure,
Built on firm foundations, innovative
In its day, being a brand new way to live;
But, how much longer can it endure?
Those once firm foundations are subsiding,
The façade begins cracking and crumbling,
Its tenants and residents are grumbling.
Urgent maintenance takes some deciding,
With responsible parties contending:
A paint job might cover over the cracks,
Is repointing what this old building lacks?
Fresh render maybe? One not yet trending,
Demolition! That truth it’s time to face,
Then raise a whole new structure in its place.
D. A.
Barmpotocracies
Splendid possibilities there could be
For social progress of humanity,
If only folk didn’t tacitly agree
To preserving their barmpotocracy.
A state with a petite-Fuhrer posing
In a suit, fatigues or clerical garb,
Whose every perfidious word’s a barb,
Hooking those who have the formal choosing,
Making legitimate what’re really crimes,
Seemingly immunised against remorse,
Sole navigator of the nation’s course
Through dark and poisonous political climes.
It can be otherwise, everyone’s got
A choice; ourselves or follow the barmpot.
D. A.
A View from the Royal Observatory
From this venerable vantage, perched between
Greenwich and observed heavens, looking down
The sward, passed naval columns to the brown
Rippled Thames, to those going, those who’ve been,
Both tourists and commuters sailing by
Isle of Dogs and Canine Wharf, where blank glazed
Pillars of commerce rise, futures appraised,
While few, too few ever ask, why
Capital of the capital still stands
Unmoved below the ever changing stars.
How persistent the illusion that bars
Plotting the transit which could free all lands
From faceless malign economic powers,
Immanent within those glacial towers.
D. A.