1.
Inexcusable rhetors excuse themselves
at each deviation to & from the Law.
One’s a leonine & golden rule, the other
caveat’s for oxen who cogitate through
loopholes of bureaucracy. Millennial
miles of small-print footnotes
where clerical eyeballs fry out of focus.
Attention has become a Sisyphean trial
rather than the sphinx’s vocation.
One verbal slip leads to national
calamity, one malapropism
capsizes Common Weal.
Lordship as a fugue or figure
of servitude, for no-one here attains
to integrity’s podium.
2.
Reign of anarchic
plutocracy supplants
the technological
dispensation. Your deferred
mortgage tightens
its dead-hand, indefinitely.
Barques in off-shore havens
coruscate; cocktail parties
simmer & smooch on decks
with vacuous pleasantries
& the ‘come-on’ glissandos.
A plethora of politicians
sloshing down sinecures
like there’s no more
tomorrow. Nation
gurns, Bios asphyxiates
to her long-drawn-out,
risible Last Waltz.
3.
Demagogue stumbles into the shambles
leagues away from the negotiating chamber.
An offence to himself & his people,
a farce embodied on continuous loop,
mortally uncoiling.
Postures at lecterns of notoriety,
primed hack with his vested interests
& privilege; this high-sprung Jack
who’s lost his nation’s sprung-rhythm,
who’s jinxed Britannia’s intelligence-dance.
Out of counter-step, out of balance,
this propped-up Jack of every
& no trade. Unmastered in servility,
a dolt unsurpassed.
Mark Wilson
Art: Ensor
Mark Wilson has previously published four poetry collections: Quartet For the End of Time (Editions du Zaporogue, 2011), Passio (Editions du Zaporogue, 2013), The Angel of History (Leaky Boot Press, 2013) and Illuminations (Leaky Boot Press, 2016). He is the author of a verse drama, One Eucalyptus Seed, about the arrest and incarceration of Ezra Pound after World War Two. His poems and articles have appeared in: The Black Herald, The Shop, 3:AM Magazine, International Times, The Fiend, Dodging the Rain, Epignosis Quarterly and Le Zaporogue.