Mars Attack

Mars looks down from the heavens on

Yet another war set in train,

Fought face to face and by proxy

Across and for the Ukraine.

While presidents and their minions

Make claim against counter claim.

Though broadcasting their differences,

They are all really the same.

Not one of them prepares accounts

Of ordinary lives lost,

As long as their stock is rising,

It’s an acceptable cost.

The present main protagonist

Is, of course, evil or mad.

Such is the accusation made

By the bombers of Baghdad.

D. A.

Statue of Limitation

Set high upon a lofty plinth

From flawless marble fashioned,

A great libertarian stands,

An advocate impassioned

By the ideal of tongues being free

To speak at will, unrestrained,

Brooking no dark despotic moves

Towards having words detained.

This patrician rhetorician

Raised in the free market place,

For all his lofty appearance,

He’s a second, hidden face

That looks in favour of free speech

And open democracy,

“Unless,” his cold eyes seem to say,

“You dare to contradict me!”

D. A.

The Conscript

He nearly always switched channels

When it was time for the news,

Decidedly unaffected

By the war they must not lose.

After all there’s beer and fashion

For a lad not yet a man,

Girls, and video games to play,

A future without a plan,

A course for him to be chosen;

It’s enough to be alive,

Not thinking of tomorrow; then

The call up papers arrive.

A few weeks initial training,

Swapping fashion for fatigues,

While men in braid and business suits

Pursue self-serving intrigues.

The front line must push on forwards,

So the lad is quickly led

To the heroic offensive

And yet still a lad, is dead.

D. A.

Drawing a Line

Draw a line all along the Irish Sea:

On one side the waves are Irish, of course,

Or maybe European, where the source

Of trade remains nominally free.

The other side is where Britannia rules

The waves that lap on her sovereign shore,

Even though sausages in Belfast cost more

Than Westminster’s, where the parliament of fools

Exercises its independence

By braying at each other like asses,

While another act of nonsense passes

In stark contradiction to common sense,

That might well dispense with such disorders,

By choosing to abolish all borders.

D. A.

Capo di Tutto Capis

Two mobsters holed up, each in his own fastness,

Like Moran on the North Side and Capone

In the South. There’s the Bear who claims to own

The East, while the one who’s tame hoods address

As the Eagle, keeps the West Side firmly

In his grip through the protection racket

He runs. Each of them knows what to expect

Straying on the other’s territory,

But both harbour an insistent desire

To encroach, snatching at their rival’s patch,

Utterly careless, in the plans they hatch,

Of bloody casualties caught in their crossfire.

Each feels exalted on his lofty perch,

Loved by his people and blessed by his Church.

D. A.

Fault Lines

The real fault is not subterranean.

Speculators and their compliant state

Caring more for profit than people’s fate,

Or inconvenient regulation

Simply circumscribed by backhanded gifts.

Body after body after body,

Battered, broken, lifted from the shoddy

Where apartments dropped like free falling lifts.

Charity appeals are quickly begun.

Survivors become miracles when dragged

From rubble, as the rest are body bagged

While the media poses, “What can be done?”

Through all societies fault lines are found,

With capital standing on shaky ground.

D. A.   

Striking

The vote’s been taken, pickets are posted,

Placards hoisted, slogans given full voice;

Their situation leaves strikers no choice

As wages fall, while profits are boosted

At the workers’ expense. This feels arranged

As was the broad discontent forty years

Ago which surely must provoke fears

That forty years on nothing much has changed.

Inflation is still whittling away pay,

Governments of various stripes all show

It matters little how they come and go,

While the interests of capital hold sway.

Class solidarity may win, but then,

Gains secured will be taken back again.

D. A.

Emergency Call Out

Accident and Emergency is crammed

While ambulances queue in the car park,

A triage nurse frets, trying to make work

This seized up system, regularly damned

By comfortable commentators who

Cite bed blocking elderly for lying

In hospital beds rather than dying.

Others claim they’d have more funds flowing through

To pay for enhanced social care, and yet

Every penny paid towards such cost

Is a unit of capital’s profit lost.

So stringent limits will always be set

Whichever party does the fashioning:

Whatever the need there’ll be rationing.

D. A.

Going Spare

The illusion is that news is the news,

When it’s the media, by its selection,

Practicing the art of misdirection

Through deciding what the spectator views

In serious tones designed to convince,

Workers, who’re struggling for half decent pay

While services fail and inflation holds sway,

What a bonus is a disgruntled prince.

Extended interviews entertaining

The notion his life alone is unique.

Then, via book deals and his chance to speak,

Capitalise on his sad complaining.

Certain confirmation this world’s not fair

Being presented with a prince going spare.

D. A.

Facing the New Year

Janus standing on the threshold, his rear

View taking in the past fifty two weeks,

When prices rose again to higher peaks

As wages fell. It begins to appear

Food banks are for many possessed by fear

Of impoverishment. Meanwhile, war still seeks

Pyrrhic victories for psychotic freaks

Posing as helmsmen, claiming they can steer

Their ships of state to port in some promised land,

That capital’s already colonised,

Drained and reduced to destitution.

The climate’s taken more than it can stand,

While socialism remains unrealised.

Janus looks for New Year resolution.

D. A.