The 3 Stars Gone and the Ongoing Gutter

Lemmy went first
And left a smile
On everyone’s face
There was dignity
In his depravity
And divine comedy
In the cavities
And craters of his
RocknRoll grace…
Children were starving
Women raped
Gays defenestrated
And villains draped
In cankerous honours
As we toasted
The Motorhead’s
Majestic memory…

Then Bowie vamoosed
Like the genie he was
Leaving a masterpiece
Hot off the press
At the top of the charts
He always was
The man who fell to heaven
We laughed and cried
At his wake in Brixton
And sang his songs
Of light and resurrection
But darkness and dismay
Filled the pages
Between the eulogies
To England’s finest
Britain’s dying
Died being forced to
Look for work
Britain’s youth
Were quietly priced out
Of the schools
That boasted Bowie’s birth
As we soaked up Bowie’s gift…

Now Rickman took
His final bow
With the same dignity
As his fellow
Working-class
Heroes face to face
With the same
Killer disease
(Whose privatised
Cure would
Be out of the leagues
Of the families
Who reared them)
All accounts
Acclaim a diamond dog
Sat lordly behind
His litany of
Delicious villains
And modern dress
Romeos
And he and
Bowie and Lemmy
And all the young dudes
Were jewels
In the crown
Of the Welfare State
That the Super Creeps
Are trying to shut down
As the Scary Monsters
March to a new war
Hitting an all time low
In brutal bomber villainy…

Roddy McDevitt