Rain on Polling Day suits;
God’s tears for the English,
Or, contempt flavoured,
A torrent of piss, possibly.
I sit in Hillingdon’s Wonder Cafe,
Representative of a country
That douses sensation with ketchup
Brewing already spent storms in the tea cup
Despite a desperate attempt to believe
That this food sets me up for the strength
To summon resistance and that I will not
Be delivered into the soured expanse of the sick.
The Church Booth awaits where crosses
Crucify futures and where my insipid home borough
Is sure to damn us with the brace and fervour
Of ignorant, selfish ticks.
But here is unhealthy food that’s well made;
Small dreams for the plate that bring comfort,
But which cannot sustain us if we are to move
Fresh and clear across days
That darken further still as I write,
Clouding the napkined words that hang heavy.
Dragged from the sky, the storm lowers,
As like gas in the gut, Brexit stays
What satisfied us before has now been placed
On the altar. We will consume the fast measure
Instead of properly contemplating the meal
That arrives dressed in choice, with the fruit
And flare of discernment, quietly steaming
Beside it, instead of the embers that spark
The oncoming and badly microwaved deal.
We will be removed from the fit if we go on
With this diet. Political cholesterol destroys us
As Johnson and co clog veins black.
They are the fat and the tar there to block us in
And obstruct us. He and his brood, the breath
Squeezers that anticipate heart attack.
Dominic Cummings stirs spells
That would set us all on the going,
His mastery of the market is frying us all
Beside death. He would bring us all down,
Just for the lark and sensation,
As he pulls strings, pushes buttons
Because of their reactions and acts, we’re bereft,
Already bereaving ourselves as we attempt
To move through the motions
Of a so called free country that will be more
Totalitarian now than before.
The first path has been laid
And the mandate now given,
What ‘we’ voted for, while deluded
Has become fate’s new chore
As we now bare the drudge
And the debt of death coming for us,
What NHS? Die for Donald
As our souls are sold by arseholes
Who excrete as they speak
And bathe us all in the ordure
That flows like brown water
Filling fonts, teacups,trenches,
A flood of destruction
That wrongful orders
And broken prayers
Can’t absolve.
I place my mark on the form
And feel the sick anger rising;
This will be the place he will speak from,
Having fooled us all he’ll run mad
Across the pathetic wheatfields of May
And twenty more seasons,
Which is more than enough time to alter
The once hopeful dreams we all had.
They say he might soften. He won’t,
Feeling this is his birthright;
Alexander the Grating has grated us
Like soft cheese.
Now the nicotine yellow souls,
Starched as they are by this cancer
Of intelligence, reason, logic, and more,
Decency, will stand or fall separate
Just as in the popular fictions of Pullman,
Many of whose fans miss the darkness
The subversion to in his writing, and yet
For us, success solves things;
Success becomes fluency.
And we want it done,right??
.
We want our clear path to progress.
By placing our faith in the Demons,
Pullman’s path and point don’t compell.
His daemons protect. Ours condemn.
I watched the necromantic TV shows.
Still full with fried breakfast,
I watched the fat accrue through the spell
That the Exit Poll cast, by 9 O’Clock
It was certain. I sat for eight hours,
Tears wedged in the eye, horrified.
Bland presenters appealed,
Quoting common sense as a method,
Before in a matter of moments
It became an antique term to apprise.
Rachel Johnson sat there, ironic and aware
Of the posture that spoke of familial betrayal
As comedians, commentators and political shades
Harboured light. She gave a good impression
Of care as they criticised her foul brother,
Doing what she could to show others
How just by being there, hate burned bright.
The chorus revolved like old doors,
Including the weak balloon of her father,
Offending all Muslims with the carefree
Remark of the mad. Or if not the mad,
Then certainly the uncaring,
Who bestride the streets, seeing their streets
And anyone else as the damned.
For we have all thrown away
What chance we had with my breakfast.
The meal that has corrupted digestion
And offers the soul no excuse.
We will be the rubbish to shift
As the despot cleans his conscience
And all former reason placed into body bags
As refuse.
The numbers rose.
Hours fell,
Along with Jo Swinson.
Her breath of air passed to Jess Phillips
For whom perhaps stars align.
Tom Watson, sat on the Channel 4 panel
All night, looking like a sad Christ on the turning,
His resignation was Labour’s deflating spear
In the side. It was as if Jesus had said,
Actually, I’m going back to Wood shop.
His sense and counsel and Portillo’s too,
Sealed the deal. Both speaking sense through divide
Decrying the evil compromise that’s been grafted.
Once in the celebrity sphere, former battles
Are immaterial now and unreal.
TV has become its own trap as we celebritise
All those on it. With all of us contained in it,
Those in the actual power plays can’t be stopped.
Instead we rage at the screen as the world
We knew falls by inches:
The length of Boris Johnson’s fat finger
Itching,then reaching
To cause first smear,
Then surrender,
Before the flicking that deigns
To turn us all off.
FRIDAY 13TH DECEMBER 2019
Now the superstition suits too, as the sun smiles to greet him,
Extending his hand to the Monarch as good as becomes a dark spell
That he bedevilled her with as he play pretends for permission;
Across the sundered state morals blister, which his guileless smile
Knows full well.
The magic we once thought was black
Has nothing to do with the Magi; the true occultists are healers
Here to revivify and contruct;
No, now the proper evil is blue,
Staining all it comes close to, even the Queen with her troubles
And unrepentant son sees no end.
He pushes us all into mist that obscures the new jackboots
That already are coming, stamping on all who’d defend.
With contemporary politics more occult that anything Crowley
Cushioned, the new sprites that conjured
Across the night of December 12th sowed fresh Hell.
It was a night to consign Corbyn to flames,
That’s for certain, as his failure with the jews,
Including Marx, and blurred message
Has torn apart the new labour and the old one, too.
Nothing gelled. He was a trapped man from the start,
But being recalcitrant wins no favour.
Not in an age in which reason, such as it was, falls denied.
He gambled perhaps as did Gordon Brown
On a posture that would have worked in a decade
Which wore community’s badge with real pride..
Now no-one understands, or in the general sense
Looks to each other. We cast our faces down
Before Grenfell, or stop the West End’s cars
To stoke fumes.
Yet sense never reaches the few
Who have stolen England like apples,
Scrumped in the orchard on this day after
Rained misery, I ask why.
The premonition stands clear.
This is worse than unlucky.
I see Bicycle signs as the Devil.
I see an ominous brow in the sky.
Political heartlands, ransacked
As the flesh is wrent and wounds opened
Damnation, destruction and fashionable zombie life
Follow on. And yet there must be a chance,
As I run wild through each garden, searching for earth
To grow over the scars we have seared with this wrong?
Did you not understand, pathetically prejudiced England
That the old tales come to take us and the dangers too,
In this way? The legends return with the surface split,
The past rises, along with last lamentation
On this the dark and much maligned, feared Friday.
So many good people were pushed under the fast falling
Ladders. Were legions of actors touretting Macbeth
Inside theatres as the ballots clapped each bad tune?
Now all we feared will come to pass, cold and distant
The psychotic detach has been proved as the once
Warm fields ape the moon. That frozen feel spreads
Despite the opening sunshine. Yesterday’s rain
That continued was just the slick deceit and disguise
That will keep us all hid within the sour milk
Of both their bosom, and keeping: Johnson, Trump,
Mogg and the other play puppets, who, happy
And hooded seemed to have blocked all chinks of light
From our eyes.
Scotland will attempt severing
As England’s corrupted isle loses mooring.
Even on stilled land we’re falling,
Tectonically drifting,
With no calm horizon before us
How will light now be measured
And how will we enjoy Saturday?
I turn to the young and I look to the old
To start over. Resist superstition.
Reopen the wounds. Force your say.
David Erdos, December 13th 2019
Only the emotion remains, and it is here in this poem. A noble piece of work in the tradition of Blake.
Comment by Cy Lester on 14 December, 2019 at 10:05 pm