Well-versed in deflection
Adept sleight-of-eye
We swallow confection
No hint of a lie
With no information
To pad out the cues
We’re sunk in deflation
That borders abuse
And used to the stories
So rarely explained
We vote for HisTories
And nothing is gained
Consistent imprudence
Of well-feathered nest
Career jurisprudence
You-know-who knows best
We’re damned by inaction
To more of the same
A knee-jerk reaction
And someone to blame
How many men does it take to deliver
A table and several chairs?
You’d think I was kidding
The joke would seem hidden
The first one just ‘didn’t do’ stairs
With telephones trilling, the second, unwilling
Could not get the top through the door
The third tried to shame me,
And name me, and blame me
For furnishings to the sixth floor
Solution: to dump them on pavement
Just junk them – delivery over and done
Denying they’d tried it
(My boss wouldn’t buy it)
The whole thing becoming a pun
For what good are services that don’t deliver
The minimum bang for your buck?
While companies try
Not to fall for the lie
That the ground floor is somehow the top
A country left to go hang, its policies blowing in the wind like so many dead leaves, rolling across the bloated corpses of those yet clutching the reins of power in their vice-like grip of death. The fetid air issuing from their purple cheeks only serving to stir up a small cyclone, spewing banknotes in a circle to help scatter the blame far and wide, sowing discord and discontent unevenly across the land, oozing mistrust and perverting the course of the rivers of truth to ensure every citizen has their rightful opportunity to know the bitter taste of fear.
Is this my land of plenty? My Jerusalem? This green and pleasant land has become a granite-grey terrain, a place of howling apes in media zoos. Where once the sun shone down, reflected in the shimmering seas and rivers, upon the citizens at work, now we see, but dark skies and troubled waters, from the defeated couch-potato throne of the unemployed. We gaze with disinterest at the hopeless perspectives issuing forth from the hi-tech plastic box in the corner. We mark the passing of time, not by the seasons, or the light of the stars, but by counting the unnatural, tallying the vanishing wrinkles on each ‘celebrity’ face, and we wonder… What is to become of us now?
I make my peace with what you cry
‘Swear now ’tis true or else you die!’
I thought such sooths as men might say
Died out long ere my yesterday…
But yet I hear on radio
And internet, and tv-show
A million screams ‘forswear your lore’
Or all with turn as was before,
Crusades will come, and burning too,
And witch hunts over ‘what is true!’
And battle cry of not-yet-men
‘Our God’s the stronger, bow to them!’
Katherine Shirley 