Merry Christmas?

It is Christmas days at the food bank,

Where patient queues wait in orderly lines,

While prices rise as the temperature declines.

Unheated homes become cheerless and dank

For those who’re working at two or three jobs

Yet still can’t earn enough for a whole week.

But if they demand more they’re damned for their cheek

Or branded as greedy, unruly mobs.

Remember how nurses were applauded

For the way they bore the pandemic brunt;

Heroes then, villains now because they shouldn’t

Ask for what capital says can’t be afforded.

There’s credit, which means debt and New Year bills,

All from the ringing of the Christmas tills.

D. A.  

Capital Gains?

The great dictator, being dictated to

By his own inner voice and ambition,

Declares his is a patriotic mission,

Insists what’s obviously a lie is true;

Dismisses any humane intrusions.

All those who stand hand on heart and salute

The flag, and do nothing to refute,

At least to themselves, such dire delusions,

Are as prisoners locking their own cell doors.

Such a loss leader, who cannot be wrong

Will slaughter others and his own young

By conducting his self-justified wars.

From his seat of power, rules without pity,

Isolated in his capital city.

D. A.

Inflation

By common consent, inflation’s a curse.

Man may not live by bread alone, it’s said,

But a few slices less if the price of bread

Keeps rising pence on pence, or even worse.

Why should the cost of things keep on soaring?

The wisdom of economic sages

Blames workers demanding higher wages,

A diagnosis it’s worth ignoring.

Because as every worker understands

This would mean the effect precedes the cause,

Like sowing the seed after the plant grows:

It’s high prices that trigger wage demands.

Far better that inflation be ended

Once money and prices are transcended.

D. A.

COP Out

Conference Of the Parties being fossil fuelled

Might be better known, to meet its function,

As COP, that’s Continue Oil Production.

Significant change will be overruled

To favour those whose intent is to foil

Advocates who would convince the meeting

Of perils of global over-heating

From continued use of coal, gas and oil.

Delegates jet in for a jamboree,

To be feted by lobbyists who insist

Temperature targets can be safely missed

A while yet; it’s all a matter of degree.

Certainly, emissions might be reduced,

Just as long as profits are still produced.

D. A.

Meating Need

Don’t set an Amazonian ranch hand

To cut or burn the rain forest for beef,

As animal husbandry is the thief

Of earth. Pork and mutton degrade the land

No matter how organically they’re farmed.

Then, however well-tended, there must be

The trauma of the slaughterhouse, To see

A grassy grazing meadow is to be charmed

By an idyll, concealing the bolt gun

And letting blade. Also, there’s the methane.

Yet the world can be fed all its protein

Once precision fermentation’s begun,

And three quarters of farmland reconciled

To a natural carbon reserving wild.

D. A.

COP27

Climate in crisis, temperatures soaring,

Hurricanes vying with droughts to be worse

And humanity’s primary curse,

As sea levels rise. It’s worth restoring

Equilibrium surely? And yet,

Perhaps the problem is just too intense:

The only response, another conference

For politicians to attend by jet.

Banquets are arranged, discussions begun,

Though radical measures are rejected

If it seems profits might be affected,

Even though all say something must be done.

A strong resolution, they’re all for it,

Until they fly home and then ignore it.

D. A.

Climate for Change

When, three hundred million years ago

Lepidodendra, solar sponges, fell,

They were pressed deep into the earth. A slow

Transmutation from toppled tree to coal,

Petrifying sunshine, eons before

The first human eye looked upon the world

And sought to abate the dark and the cold,

Beginning to dig into nature’s store:

But human industry will have its way.

While those who exploit power for their own ends

Have grown careless of the way profit tends

To determine the climate’s desperate trends.

A choice to be made, socialism’s sense

Or capital’s storm, famine and pestilence.

D. A.

Marketing Democracy

A government of quite bewildering

Incompetence, so fiscally inept

The currency crashed. It can’t accept

Responsibility for what’s occurring,

Proffering excuses and platitudes.

Rather than letting the truth emerge,

Ministers are pretending they’re in charge

By not letting reality intrude,

Because reality’s quite sinister.

Elections held, but the ballot box hides

From voters it’s the market that decides:

It hardly matters who’s the prime minister.

Vote right! Vote left! Stand on the centre ground,

Enjoy a free choice – while profits abound.

D. A.

Kakistocracy

Mark the rise of the Kakistocracy,

Misrulers of wherever they occur,

Prime minister here, a president there,

Or some such grandiose sobriquet.

Falsely claiming visions they don’t possess,

Being rendered myopic by vanity

They can no longer see humanity;

Making worse every problem they address.

Politicians who are vulgarly dense,

Enriching the rich, impoverishing the poor,

Slaughtering our young through their acts of war;

Gross mismanagement through incompetence.

But they only rule from their gilded towers

Because people surrender them their powers.

D. A.    

Orthodox View

Patriarch in robes sown with gilded thread

Before his glistering altar stands,

Holding the Gospels in jewelled hands

Firmly proclaiming what those scriptures said

About swords, plough shares and the Prince of peace,

While praising the president and his state

And damning their enemies to their fate,

His cheek unturned. It is time to release

The apostles of war to bless with shell

And shot hospitals, nurseries and schools,

Wherever the innocent or such fools

Seek refuge in such a Christian hell.

This prelate seeks power as his word dies

On his lips, with him being Lord of the Flies.

D. A.