I
AT NATO
On Trump’s indignation at Trudeau’s alleged rebuke
So, you think they laughed at you?
More fool you; so do not be the joke sense was made for;
Redesign your fat image to something more akin
To a spear, one able to pierce prejudice, disseminate,
And force reason, as opposed to being the orange blot
On all landscapes. If true evil stains, you’re its smear.
At a celebration of NATO, all those responsible
For protection, not just of the world, but of methods
With which we currently contemplate life,
Could effectively see through the blur that you have placed
On clear thinking, as either ignorance or Alzheimers
Eats into your face to spew lies.
O, The Donald, you strut on the window ledge,
Looking Hellwards. In closing said window you have also
Sentenced us to the fall, for the space is narrower now
In which to resist all those like you, some of whom
Sipped that evening the expensive Chablis by gilt doors.
Apparently, you were the fool at that court,
As Justin Trudeau cast aspersions, as did that other
French speaker, Macron, and possibly our own Princess Anne.
Only the oil slick Johnson stood back, careful to ease himself
From the branding, no doubt primed by Cummings:
May his coward’s stain leave him damned.
In the conflagration to come, let the brandy and port
Fuel the burning that ignites the asbestos
Under your gold wrought wig and fouled plans,
And may you blister beneath the nuclear heat
Of your visage; that flushed spread of colour
That makes your lips whiten and your small boy’s eyes
Close to mad.
As they dined around you, your puff,
And later hurried huff gave them purpose,
But also portent, because if they too see the farce
Then what hope remains for those kept beyond these
Pale, stricken structures that we allow to loom over us all
And which are losing foundation as each system we sought
Fails its task.
There are no Statesmen now of any gender.
All that remains are the copers, the rakers perhaps
Through the strewn, who find now and then one point
Of regard to part polish, while you falsely glisten
And they laugh at your invented fake news.
Like Old Henry VIII exchanging divorce for religion,
You have constructed a viewpoint that warps the mind
And the eye. Nothing is as it was. Or as it seems.
Never will be. In your wake, all facts will have to be boiled
As truth fries. Fuck off. Fade away, a strange thing to say
In a poem, but as the undeserving sneer at you,
Then I sneer too, at this slight. The world you rule is not real.
Perhaps nor is the one I exist in.
But if it means that those others can see through your smear
There’s some hope. All we need now is the young
To motivate and reorder. We need a new NATO;
A National Antagonism That Opposes
U
You dark bastard.
My God lasso and hang you as It leaves you lost:
Words as rope.
David Erdos December 5th 2019
II
GRAFFITTI AND GALL
On the defamation of Westhoffen Cemetery
And so the hatred now spreads across the sacred soil
At Westhoffen. A line of Rabbis, crestfallen
Look for salvation to stem despite spray,
As a new brace of fascists break earth to graffiti hate
On the gravestones, and the memories of jewish
Extinction mix with the spent green of old grasses
And an ominous haze and smoke of ghost grey.
Europe burns with intent, watched over by lopsided
Angels; as all right winds ascend, the clipped left
Fly in circles, spiralling down, seeking help.
The force of negative feeling stuns even them,
As they seek repair despite hurdles,
And man’s spiteful hunger to crash and condemn
Darkens health. Jews dying becomes a kind of legacy
In this context, for more than the death of all people
It gives an excuse to hate’s pen. We rarely hear
Of a Christian Churchyard defiled – short of Tony Harrison’s V,
And Muslim death fields are private, so where lies the bounty
That these barbaric hordes try to spend?
For these are not Israel’s graves, despite whatever homing beliefs
Of the corpses. These were the Jews left near Strasbourg
And all of the war scarred towns of France. People of faith,
Personality, peace and talent, separate to the aggressors
Raging their anti-Palestinian stance. Acts such as these are a slur
On all names and all people. The lack of a Stein, or Berg
Won’t excuse you from ignoring the current news, or this ‘trend,’
For persecution, like this becomes all persecution.
Each day is wracked and room ruined,
When, undefended,
Those barred from breath
Still need friends.
David Erdos December 5th 2019
III
DESPOT DESPERATE
When you type ‘Boris’ into a phone
The iphone correct displays ‘virus’: and so it has proved,
As it rages in the week before careless ticks.
In the photos today he is stuffing sausage rolls
In his face as he attempts to vomit across the low public,
A form of germ warfare in peacetime as we grow Bulimic
On the lies he spits and fall sick. The shit, it seems, will do
And say anything to secure the warmed seat of power.
As it corrupts our guts, swelling in us, and squatting atop
London’s bowl, the bowels of the city give way to the ordure
In his smile as I see it, forcing the flush of unreason, constipating
True progress and leaving all of those who’d oppose in the cold.
Who do we choose? As he spouts his overboiled,
False appeasements, the true acid slides, creeping underneath
Floor and stair. While Corbyn squeezes the Thatcherite fear
That for too long has lain buried, he attempts to revive Marx,
But stays Spencer, trying a failing sale to the public
Of the kind of concern that’s not there. Suddenly,
The Liberal Democrats re-emerge at this time of disrepair
As solution; but now not even a coalition can feature
If those aiming for Saints grasp Old Nick,
In his corruptible blonde disguise, he is already preparing
The jackboot – that they hear in France and all Europe
As Weimar returns, despite clicks
On either SM, Or S&M
In the bondage sense; we’re all leathered. Social Media
May oppose things but the masochism that sits
Behind the ‘I’m Alright Jack,’ credo that rivers through this
Sad country. As Mussolini sorted the transport,
So lies and Brexit will strap and force us
To bend and consume Johnson’s shit.
Do we do it to ourselves, or is it truly
The ‘Them’ who would injure?
Give the fat toad Farage any platform
And he will lower it still, beyond dirt.
And so grunting Britain, beware
The continued rise of each despot.
For we all become desperate
When we fail to understand
Where it hurts.
David Erdos December 5th 2019
Paintings: Hieronymous Bosch