Loss Leaders

The Great Helmsman! Father of the Nation!

Or king, or queen, or tsar, or president

Or panjandrum…whatever the intent,

Good or bad, honorific adulation

Sits ill with democracy. To be led

Is to surrender self to other’s whim,

To live or die in another’s name:

Cenotaphs list the obedient dead.

Someone motivated by vanity,

Someone focused on the national mission,

Someone blinded by personal ambition,

Someone with no sense of humanity,

Someone who’s so qualified to succeed

As leader, should not be allowed to lead.

D. A.

As Then, Now

Then Vietnam. And ‘Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh’

Was the chant by a hundred thousand, more,

In Grosvenor Square. Militant anti-war,

Pro Hanoi, ‘Vietcong are going to win!’

And win they did, B52s undone

By bicycles and the body bagged dead:

Surely, surely, the future would be red.

But then the reckoning, what had been won?

Low wage work and long laborious hours

As life in the red turned out to be debt

Servicing profit. Legacy of Tet

Was securing of capital’s powers.

Now Ukraine. Though sides have been rearranged,

So many dead and nothing will have changed.

D. A.

Loss Leader

Don’t place trust in leaders, leaders tell lies,

They’ll rousingly speak of national missions,

But in their hard hearts personal ambitions

Echo, and all humanity denies.

Their bellicose blather’s so much foul breath

That poisons the air in far too many lands,

They’ve got indelible blood on their hands

Spilled by those they mustered and marched to death.

Leaders talk of courage, dismissing fear,

Of honour gained through personal sacrifice,

Privilege of paying the ultimate price;

All the while the leader leads from the rear.

Though leaders may rise and leaders may fall,

Pity is, there’s no need of leaders at all.

D.A.