Spectacular Stories

Headlines were about a sex marketeer,

Spiced with possible royal relations,

The media was alive with sensations.

Until the tale changed and it became clear

The Commander in Chief had his eagle eye

On Greenland; cue a sharp change to the script.

How easily sovereignty can be stripped

Away, without a by your leave or why.

But, then on to the next cause, the next plan,

Kidnap an inconvenient head of state.

Yet hardly had he succumbed to his fate

When the world’s focus was moved to Iran.

Not letting news settle on a topic,

Spectacles might make people myopic.

D. A.

Collateral Damage

The primary target has been destroyed,

By a surgical strike designed to leave

Blasted and charred ruins for those who grieve

To pick through, for all who couldn’t avoid

Being reduced to statistics, a body count

On the evening news. Strategy is clear,

It’s the brutal diplomacy of fear,

Leaving far too few remains to amount

To complete human beings. There is concern,

International stock markets are falling,

With speculation, futures are stalling:

How many losses before fortunes turn?

The enemy is easily identified,

Being those barbarians on the other side.

D. A.

The Prince

The prince is so divined by rite of birth,

No merit necessary, nor deserved;

Predestined not to serve, but to be served

Irrespective of foibles, fault or worth.

What personal qualities should a prince show?

Those, perhaps, that best define his station,

Daring! Cruelty! Manipulation!

As promulgated by Old Niccolo.

These media days maybe it’s more vital

A public prince should be wisely bidden

To keep such characteristics hidden,

As exposure could cost him his title.

But, should monarchy, like the old Tsars, fall,

Capital will just repossess it all.

D. A.

Quotidian Fallacy

Volunteering must be unnatural,

Most certainly a contradiction indeed

Of that basic human motivation, greed!

A person’s worth is measured by the deal

Securing the highest price for work done,

While any employer will want to see

How much work can be extracted for free:

Surely no one will work a shift for fun?

Astonishingly, there are those who say

The world should turn on freely meeting needs,

All working together and no one leads;

People choosing to live a different way.

But stopping human nature from rearing?

About as likely as volunteering!

D. A.

Eight Billion People

Today, eight billion people or so

Did not dispatch drones and missiles to kill

Neighbours, didn’t intimidate or instil

A sense of fear. Mostly they’re content to go

About their lives without any glister

Of gold braid, tittles or honours. Indeed,

It’s only too clear where such awards lead:

A-lister scratching the back of A-lister.

They aren’t trafficers for sex or cheap labour,

Those who exploit the weak and distressed,

Whose only real interest is interest,

Who believe neighbour should exploit neighbour.

Better by far the eight billion would choose

To live otherwise than those in the news.

D. A.

Change

Neither gods nor leaders! It is people

Who make and remake societies.

Therefore, within human reason power lies

To discern and dismiss all the feeble

Commonplace political panjandrums,

Officers of state, that prestige deranges,

Under whose guidance nothing changes,

While capital keeps on doing its sums,

Totting up all the profits and losses,

Profits being what labour of workers yields,

Workers whose losses scatter battlefields

At the self-serving behest of bosses.

However things are presently arranged,

When people decide, then things can be changed.

D. A.

Demagogue

It all sounds like hubris, vainglorious

Bluster, rantings of megalomania,

Domination via the media,

As if there is nothing left to discuss.

A tsunami of personality

Surging around the world, inundating

With a flood of words beyond debating,

Such is the depth of this banality.

Afraid of drowning, there are those who try

To swim against the tide, but distracted

By their efforts, they are misdirected

From all that is unobserved floating by.

Judgement saturated by anger and dread,

Becomes unaware of what’s not being said.

D. A.

Security

More guns, bigger bombs, longer range missiles,

Thicker armour, smarter drones, firm allies,

Control of the land, the oceans, the skies,

Compliant nation of bellumophiles,

A leader blessed with infallibility,

Martialled prelates to assure the laity

That they have conscripted the deity;

Add political instability.

Meanwhile the bottom-liners try to gauge

Where the rarest rare earth minerals lie,

The cost/benefit of those who will die

And the profits to be made from carnage.

Behind rhetoric, where’s the surety?

Only real change can secure security.

D. A.

These Old Men

Such are the old men. It is their thinking,

Not accumulated years, make them so,

These holders of office, presidents who

Have become too addicted to drinking

The elixir of power, or theocrats,

Even now, claiming divine appointment

For what is really their corrupt intent,

Reacting violently to perceived plots

In any opposition. Whether god

Or Mammon is promoted or cited

Is of no relevance to those slaughtered,

Supposedly for the national good.

There’s no proper accounting because

Theirs’s is the profit, the people the loss.

D. A.  

Executive Action

Whine of drones is a clear indication

Diplomacy is not being considered.

Legitimacy’s readily deferred

Concerning judgement of a rogue nation.

It’s the will of the Commander in Chief

That can decide upon robust action

To eliminate a capital faction,

Disregarding the terror and the grief.

Borders are not sacrosanct boundaries,

Sovereignty not so sovereign after all.

Which governments rise, succeed or fall

Is subject to the markets’ vagaries.

Sound of drones is sycophants eulogising

The great leader whose stock, it seems, is rising.

D. A.