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.   

Christmas Cheer?

Christmas, Yuletide or Saturnalia,

Marking the solstice, the turn of the year

Appears to require wine and good beer

To lubricate momentary failure

Of the social norms of the working week.

It’s the lords of misrule who’re in command

Or so it seems, yet supply and demand

Gift wrapped around the tree quietly speak

Eloquently of Christmas credit cards,

Of budgets stretched and unsettled accounts,

Of this season when profit margins mount,

An imperative no business disregards.

With heads still muzzy and waistbands tighter,

It’ll be back to work, the wallets lighter.

D. A.  

Bloody Bondi

There’s blood in the sand, sharks circle offshore.

An unridden surf is still surging in

Under an ascendant unflinching sun,

Rapacious gulls hover and dive and soar.

Beach bags wouldn’t have been packed with bandages,

Flip flops and sun block, but no tourniquets.

A day for standing down and being at ease

With the world awhile, away from its rages.

Folk gathered comfortably together,

Sharing a common weal for a few hours,

Unaware agents of much darker powers

Were preparing for a change in the weather.

How the day started! How the day finished!

With humanity, once more, diminished.

D. A.

Your Party – Not Mine

Is it time a new party was founded?

Sure, the old one’s comprehensively failed,

The locomotive of Labour derailed.

It seems hope is once again unbounded,

As so often before, another red flag

To be run up the polls and kept flying.

Then come the splits, the schisms, the dying,

Such a weight of expectation to drag

Down the vision that was always myopic.

The old nostrums and canards trotted out,

Members who cannot debate, only shout:

Who is going to vote for the shambolic?

This challenge to capitalism’s resolved,

With, at no point, socialism involved.

D. A.

Treasury Tales

Red box of exchequer delights open

To reveal a tax on the tooth fairy,

With fruit plucked off the magic money tree,

Treasure borrowed from the lair of a dragon

Or the pot of gold at the rainbow’s end.

Raise taxes here, then lower others there,

Increase benefits trying to be fair,

Only to leave others trying to defend

The little they have got. The dragon’s loot

Will move off-shore, the tooth fairy replaced

By a drone, the pot of gold can’t be traced,

While the money tree’s torn up by the root.

All fiscal tales told, Labour’s and Tories’,

Turn out to be merely fairy stories.

D. A.

Treasury Tales

Red box of exchequer delights open

To reveal a tax on the tooth fairy,

With fruit plucked off the magic money tree,

Treasure borrowed from the lair of a dragon

Or the pot of gold at the rainbow’s end.

Raise taxes here, then lower others there,

Increase benefits trying to be fair,

Only to leave others trying to defend

The little they have got. The dragon’s loot

Will move off-shore, the tooth fairy replaced

By a drone, the pot of gold can’t be traced,

While the money tree’s torn up by the root.

All fiscal tales told, Labour’s and Tories’,

Turn out to be merely fairy stories.

D. A.

COP…out

Assemble fifty thousand delegates,

From around the world. Ask what the price is,

When considering the climate crisis,

Of convening fourteen days of debates.

Then there’s the press corps and TV news,

Social media that requires broad banding,

The wining, the dining, the glad handing:

A towering Babel of discrepant views.

Far, far too many are still enraptured

With fossil fuels and profits they’re making.

For all the hot air there’s no mistaking

That not a gram of carbon is captured

After the fortnight, despite pressing need.

Just lots of motions with nothing agreed.

D. A.