poem poetry evil and vicious satire

BROOM CUPBOARD

broom cupboard
you have the rigour
and acumen
of a broom cupboard
and not one
that anyone in
their right mind
would consider
spacious

no, this cupboard
is so tiny
best it could do
would be to hold
a brush or two,
though admittedly
more could be hosted
if the broom and brushes
were in fact broken,
which, in your case,
they naturally are

and so we must come
to your intervention
a strange mixture I felt
between the necessarily glib
and striving
to be profound

if it were served as sustenance
it seemed neither solid
nor in any way, by
size or shape, nothing
that had not been pre-,
paid or especially selected
to give the support
the ranks of the mindless
seem to save
for their own

no fat suet dumpling floating
in hot greasy water
is the best
cuisine analogy I can
dredge up for you

watching that fat imperial face
dole out imperial ideology
as if history
had stripped your
divided nation

down to a plane, perhaps
a tank
and a boat or two

not the right backup stuff
for tough talk premised
on old battleship diplomacy

pop
goes the pop gun

in any
real confrontation with
the rising world
they sweep clean
your talk is doomed