MOTHER BRITAIN

‘This mother is a Briton colonising the alien attributes of her marriage; her marriage the appropriation of an alien property. […] These so unserviceable rooms are her dominions; just so much of her grandeur. The higgledy piddled[y] contents of the cupboards her national [reserves] [she] guards it and gloats to herself […]’ —Mina Loy, ‘Goy Israels’

This is not your England.	Finders Keepers

	Budgering the mind blank through millstone and wheelgrease, 
Rolls Royce	Mother’s Pride	     Cocky little bleeders
the typecast cast in bronze launch arrowheads or bear an alien wind

	to set your house alight.

		High gates and low grates for the ungracious. 
High Risers	   Anti-Climb paint	 Everyone’s a winner
Mother Britain, the savages are coming with their kowtow indolence,

	to suffer your cream teas. 
	Got any Vera’s
		Put them back in the foundries,

			before they develop a taste for it. 
	Old Mother Hubbard		 Buckle my shoe
You should have boiled them in oil on the white cliffs of Dover. 
	Churchill’s floodgate      Colonial Belly		 		
You are stuck here—

	the television antennae,

		a boy in a paddock waving at a passing train, 
Chav Wagon	    Brucie Bonus 
		the edges of tabloid newspapers, 
			Land of the Lotus-Eaters

		JOBOS for ASBOS

	Ragheads n’ Toerags 
 	they hook themselves around your knees.

No, this is not your England. 
	Think they own the place		 
That turgid arteriole of traffic running North to South,

		Clickety Click

	breeds a slow choke on the greenbelt

		in satellite town after town. 
	Good fences make good neighbours
No neighbourly smile awaits you in Luton; that isn’t England anymore:

	the Pakistanis hobble about with waxen faces,

		avoid your bonfires by averting their eyes. 
		Wears a bloomin’ tea cosy 
Let us consider a lively Southall Diwali— 
		Pint of Pride

		Heart of the bull
		Singh Street

		Slitty Eyes
how the natives drag their goat tails round in dances

	to amuse the supperers at The Brilliant,

smiling, at you, their Lady in roses and lace,

	the waiters memsahibing nauseous kormas

		in small brass cauldrons.
	 	Jammy Dodgers

		Pig in a poke	
Clever little girl! Little Indian! Little wonder

	you love the Jolly Golly,

		clowning a grin of sugar and blood,

that is, until he puts his hand out for a tip. 
		Pay peanuts get monkeys
Or picks up his whip 
	What the Dickens	What the crippens 
	and drives you screaming to the foaming Tiber

		to drown yourself in better eras gone. 
		One-Hundred-and-Eighty!!
Florals are in,

	Torysaurus 	Tombola Pimms

	so are heavy nightgowns, pregnancy,

		one-egg cake recipes,

			austerity measures of gin. 
Hey Diddle Diddle 
Weren’t you all drinking it in secret,

	carrying on in private, 
More tea Vicar		Just a little nosegay 
		then popping out to the front gate,

			to wave at buses of schoolchildren? 
				UK MP BBC BNP
Baking in triplicate with shredded suet, offal and sweetmeats,

	pies acrid with uric kidneys,

		passed through dead fingertips

			into flour and salt and milk. 
		Cheerio 	Go home wogs	 
That was your England. 
Before the duggard folly of old women in raincoats and round-heeled shoes, 
Our kind vs. their kind
before the tally of empty houses was a childhood trick, 
Only the cat looks at the King
before you could remember the sound of rationed foods entering the kitchen, 
Fight night 	Curry Club	One for the Bishop
before the socks of the grammar school girls shone like fresh paint 
Leaves on the line
you were born into a dying England. 
In 1915 the British Raj culled a temple of protesters

	and strung them up like dogs—what do you think of that?

			Shrouds have no pockets

		That slight shoves you off the sidewalk now,

			makes you redundant,

				marries your sons. 
	Immigrant counterfeit		Blud Clut

				Whoopsadaisy
Would it interest you to know that my grandmother,

	a pious woman of Lahore,

		refused England’s green shores

			lest the shadow of a gentile fall on her? 
	Giant Albion
The thought of you turned her stomach,

		of you and your beloved Queen. 
	Bulldog spirit 		Hokey-Cokey 
So have your hog roasts, Two Fat Ladies 
your EDL marches, Gandhi family
your reptile glances, Kipling-haunted
your polite prejudices, Thatcher banjax
your charity balls, Rob Peter to pay Paul 
your 50’s revival tableware, Fortnum and Mason
your tea-towel-suck-up-to-the-congenitally-ignorant-Royal-Wedding,
Kate Middlebrow	Willie the Conqueror
your eleventh-hour cocktails and heraldic silver teaspoons—
Shovels n’ spades 	Devil’s creatures 
the embers of your Empire swallowed whole like red coals

by the exceeding ex-dominions. 
Spare the rod and spoil the child
God save the Queen
Your wellie-wanging contests. 
God save the Queen
Your ‘spot the German’
God save the Queen
Your blasted England
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