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.

Political Amnesia

Those whose collective past is badly scarred

By such brutal confinement and killing,

Might be expected to be unwilling

To allow their hearts to become so hard

As to emulate their persecutors

Through perpetrating a modern Childermass,

When self-defence is not even a crass

Excuse. It’s always the innocent in wars

Whose lives too often end being cheaply spent.

When even the hospitals are burning,

It appears there may be no learning,

No lessens drawn down from any recent

History. All seems power and vanity;

Yet there is choice, to choose humanity.

D. A.

Splitting Differences

Ordnance unleashed. A residential block

Reduced to rubble, families rendered

Into body parts, judgment suspended

By the perpetrators of this attack,

An act of unconscionable aggression

Deviously portrayed as self-defence.

In Ukraine it’s without purpose or sense,

Being due to a despot’s callous decision.

Conversely in Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon

It’s justified proportionate action,

Targeting a known terrorist faction

That, despite civilians, had to be done.

Surely culpable as the attackers

Are their erstwhile belligerent backers?

D. A.

Conference Party Season

Government and opposition benches

Deserted: Ministers and their shadows

Have left and the cogs of government slow.

Called up to their political trenches

Delegates – left, right and centre – gather

For their celebrations of platitudes

And misdirection, pompous beatitudes

Of concern and tele-prompted blather.

Jam for tomorrow will be generous,

But jam for today is more thinly spread

Or even denied to those on dry bread,

Who should be thankful and not make a fuss.

Broad discussions and debates are arranged;

Then it’s all over, and nothing has changed.

D. A.

Progress

The entrepreneur and the go-getter

Engineered the world as it is today.

The obsolete banished, progress holds sway

Still, but is frustrated by a fetter

From realising what could be achieved,

If no longer bound by need for profit.

All human needs could readily be met

Once society’s finally relieved

Of the burden of money. People can

Decide en masse how their interests elide,

Once they choose to create a worldwide

Commonwealth. What capitalism began

Will be realised when social schism

Is resolved through progress to socialism.

D. A.

Cultivating the Rose

Standing in the Downing Street Rose Garden

Amongst deadheads, the new prime minister

Is making his withering vision clear,

Peering through rich man’s spectacles. Number ten

Is significant, as it’ll be a decade

At least before social democratic

Austerity eases, having done the trick

Of promising progress will have been made

Towards a fairer, wealthier nation.

Meanwhile, more will have to make do with less,

Even as a privileged few prosper. Guess

Who? Such is the dismal situation.

All those who voted for change can be sure

The Rose Garden scent is bovine ordure.

D. A.

War Gamers

Night by night sitting like obsessed gamers

Fixated on screens. This evening’s download

Could be Gaza, Ukraine, somewhere abroad.

Graphics are so realistic, the framers

Ensure all players are fully in-shot,

Both perpetrators and victims portrayed

In role, with impressive weapons arrayed:

Rack up more points than last night? Perhaps not.

A helpful voiceover or avatar

Pops up whenever there’s something to say,

To grab attention when it’s drifting away,

Or tempted to upload another war.

The spectacular needs to be massive,

For viewers to be retained and passive.

D. A.