Losing our Heads

Too many place their trust in queens and kings

Or posturing, self-promoting presidents.

But where’s the difference? When to all intents

And purposes, whether birth or ballot brings

Them to throne or office, each for all the pomp

With or without benefit of election

Become the focus for misdirection,

Hoping none see the trick by those who romp

Away with the profits and disappear,

While the esteemed leader of the nation

Receives the expected adulation

From all whose vision’s presently unclear.

But what meaning for any head of state,

When the spectacle fails to fascinate?

D. A.

 Must the Show Go On?

When, finally, a monarch’s life is spent,

Then a precisely scripted spectacle

Is enacted, highly political,

It becomes a theatrical event.

Cue republicans who are expected

To heckle from the fringes, even though

There would be a very similar show

For a head of state who’d been elected.

The crown becoming dislodged by fate

Poses the point, what need for any head

Of state is there, either living or dead?

Indeed, why have a nation or a state?

 Only when capitalism’s interred

Can a leaderless future be inferred.

D. A.

 X Factoring

Votes cast and counted, there’s the liberty

Of one hundred and sixty thousand choices

Choosing without forty million plus voices

Being heard. Such is bourgeois democracy.

The “first amongst equals” is selected

According to the whims and partial views

Of Tories. Whoever might win or lose

Little can reasonably be expected

Beyond measures intended to serve

Capitalism’s best interests, its state

Designed to serve its purposes and fate.

And yet, the unconsidered still reserve

The power of all the present process mocks

To transform their lives via the ballot box.

D. A.

Doing Business

Twenty twenty two; six years of Brexit

And the Tory headed plan realised.

Surely then, no one can be surprised

Their country is actually in the shit.

British sovereignty means freedom for sure

For every water company that dumps

Raw sewerage overflows through off-shore pumps,

And each beach becomes an open sewer.

This septic isle set in an ordure sea,

Where pursuit of profit and private wealth

Must take precedence over public health:

Such is this effluent society.

Lapped by crusted waves of filth, Britain sinks

While capitalism literally stinks.

D. A.

Dispute

There is always a need to modernise,

Old ways of working are superseded,

Without real change progress is impeded;

It’s in novel thinking the future lies.

Technology advances to the point

Of labour not being so laborious,

Could work even become glorious

And not something that puts life out of joint?

Who would resist choosing a better way

Once the consensus has been apprized

That benefits commonly realised

Resolve issues of poverty and pay?

But for now, workers are forced to dispute

Changes capital wants to institute.

D. A.

Court Circular

(A Tale of Two Leaders)

One summoned to court in recognition

Of his leadership in commissioning

Bombing, shelling, blasting and reducing

Cities to rubble. True to his mission,

No matter what the human rights and wrongs,

Or the legal opinion of lawyers.

Another, once a lawyer who prefers

The statesman’s mantle and honorary gongs,

Who also had cities blasted and shelled

To wrack and ruin, the dead unreckoned,

Has been duly recognised and beckoned

To appear at the Queen’s court, having excelled,

In profiting from political barter,

To merit the Order of the Garter.

D. A.

 Inflation

The world, it seems, is a hot air balloon

With burners turned on full blast. There’s soaring

Temperatures, prices, and no ignoring

That all the while capital fuels the boon

Energising profits. Quantitative

Easing further feathered a nest or two,

Making fantasy money with the true

Recklessness of counterfeiters. Now give

A glance towards a prime minister here,

Or president there, whose vainglorious

Egos, puffed up with self-conceit, don’t fuss

Over being strangers to truth. It is clear,

Surely, unless we all want to be tricked,

For a better world, this balloon must be pricked.

D. A.

 Choice

It is not by force of arms or terror

That this benighted world can be remade,

There’s no infallible elite to aid

This process, nor leader without error.

Reforms have not brought such change by stealth,

Reformers fail, whatever their intent,

Career politicians are mouths for rent

By those rich enough to safeguard their wealth.

All can be transformed through the power of choice,

A new world without money, war and greed,

Commonwealth arranged to satisfy need

And all achieved through the popular voice.

World without borders, no national schism:

True democrats demand socialism.

D. A.

Where Truth Lies

It seems there’s a self-appointed elite

Who are the exception that proves their rule,

And consider it’s only for the common fool

To abide by their laws; such their conceit.

These are leaders, those special chosen few,

Rising like Messiahs above the herd,

Convinced that truth is a flexible word

And a word can mean what they want it to.

Should they ever be caught telling a lie,

It will turn out they had their fingers crossed,

Or, perhaps, truth is a lie that’s been glossed,

And who cares anyway, let it pass by.

Follow my leader is just blind man’s buff,

And while folk shrug, leaders are secure enough.

D.A.

Party Politics

The law’s the law, without fear or favour

Or it’s no law at all, merely the whim

Of law makers who feel they’re free to trim

Statutes to suit themselves. How they savour

The power of impunity they presume

Is theirs by right as they’re elevated

Above the common herd who are fated

To be the law’s dupes. There is always room

For any self-promoting succeeder

To cross fingers and then apologise

If caught breaking his own rules or telling lies,

Especially the Prime Misleader.

The blindfold on Justice slips and, too late,

Sees herself as a hostage of the state.

D. A.