Exploitation

Oldham, Rotherham and Telford, all stained

With children’s tears, as if just these places

Are marked, are being marked, by anguished faces

Distressed through exploitation unrestrained;

Only to be exploited once again

As it suits politicians to sound

Like they are standing on moral high ground.

Apologies will be issued and then

Comes obfuscation by legislation.

Law can’t mitigate what’s tacitly assumed,

That consumers determine what’s consumed;

Economics regulate relations.

Rolling headlines, interviews by the score,

Until victims are invisible once more.

D. A.

New Old Year?

Backward facing Janus covers those eyes

That cannot look away from the grim sights

Blighting far, far too many days and nights,

The common realisation of lies,

Told about the military murder

Of expendable civilians

For what will prove to be mere pyrrhic gains.

Then those wild firestorms and floods that occur

As climate changes but policies don’t.

And, so it was, yet another year went,

With capitalism seeming content

And secure in its pursuit of profit.

From the threshold of the old and the new,

Does Janus hold a more positive view?

D. A.

The Unmasking of Tyranny

The tyrant feels secure in his redoubt

Amidst his cabinet of sycophants,

Where all his cold calculations and rants

Are applauded. He has the power to flout

Even pretences of democracy.

None oppose him who’re generously treated,

The few who do are swiftly deleted,

Or at least they’re detained indefinitely.

Yet aquifers of resentment and fear,

Build pressure, underground initially,

While the surface seems superficially

Stable, a violent rupture’s always near.

The brute once felled, might circumstance recruit

Not a liberator, but another brute?

D. A.

Forty Years On

Forty years on from the colliers’ last stand,

When the Blues were so determined to break

Workers’ solidarity: what to make

Of it now? Was it no more than a grand

Gesture, final knockings of working class

Militancy, an end of defiance

Before a general, grudging compliance

With capitals’ world order coming to pass?

The Greens, who supported the miners then,

Would now surely campaign to close the mines,

While Red influence continues to decline

And reform proves a busted flush again.

Hope refracted through politics’ prism

Needs refocusing on socialism.

D. A.

Lest We Forget

‘Lest we forget’ the pious legend runs

Around the cenotaph, fallen leaves swept

Away for the marking of that unkept

Promise, the final silencing of guns,

Rumbling ever since. Led by royalty

Decked out in their martial pomposity,

While conflicts with all gross ferocity

Make a deadly mockery of loyalty,

The gathered all silently bow their heads

And whisper to themselves, ‘Never no more!’

But such sentiment does not prevent war:

Indeed the living thus betray the dead.

There’s no peace, not even an armistice

While capitals continue to claim their price.

D. A.

Drama or Farce?

Viewed through red and blue tinted spectacles,

The two candidates perform as per script,

A political pantomime that’s gripped

The media at least. To raise the hackles

There’s the villain and his dastardly schemes,

With a reasonable heroine who charms:

Their parts deliver pathos and alarms,

While nothing in the plot’s quite what it seems.

With faux audience participation

People are moved to laughter, tears and rage,

But know they will never be centre stage;

This drama is not of their creation.

Both actors appear sincere and intense

Enough to fascinate the audience.

D. A.

Budget Event Horizon

The vast black hole into which the nation’s

Wealth is being irresistibly drawn

Is unstable capitalism, grown

Through ever expanding depredations

Until it has consumed the entire world.

The gravity of its profit hunger

Is such, well-meaning policies no longer

Escape oblivion. Intentions hurled

Into its maw are destined to never

Be seen again. The exchequer must yield,

For the red box proves a pathetic shield:

Fiscal escape is a doomed endeavour.

All promises the chancellor made are hushed,

Fond hopes for change relentlessly crushed.

D. A.

Plato’s Cave Update

(Don’t Turn Off Your Device)

On the rear wall of Plato’s cave these days

Is mounted a LG OLED evo screen,

Best Quantum Matrix Technology seen

So far. And twenty-four-seven there plays

Corporate sport of all national flavours,

To fascinate those wearing the favours.

Wars and disasters, the various ways

People can be filmed dying, through a haze

Of smoke and dust. All too much? Flick between

Channels, no need to fret as the world’s been

Hermetically sealed behind glass, our gaze

Misdirected so our view never wavers.

Unless viewers wrest control of what occurs

They will remain simply passive voyeurs.

D. A.

Proportionate?

Four children playing marbles is an act

Of terrorism? What of families

Forced to sleep in tents? The authorities,

Judge quite proportionate to the fact,

Launching a punitive conflagration

In order to maintain security,

The long-term future and the purity

Of a divinely appointed nation.

The irony of a pogromed-people

Driving others into ghettos, where they

Will survive and simmer, then find a way

Of striking back as soon as they’re able.

Observed in the breach, professed human rights

Spurned as rhetoric of anti-Semites.

D. A. 

Cycle of Belligerence

Sucker punch shattering crystal-brittle

Relations: gathering in a dance field

Where harvesters of the young reap their yield.

So do belligerent nations whittle

Each other away, with atrocity

For atrocity, all claiming that theirs’

Is an appropriate response, declare

Themselves graced by God’s partiality.

To what do the unnumbered dead amount?

Meanwhile earthly powers lament, then resort

To lending unconditional support

And munitions. Who’ll be called to account?

Victims become perpetrators and then

Victims before perpetrators again…

D. A.