RIGHT AS SHE BLOWS

RIGHT AS SHE BLOWS

Human rights
human rights

you have to squint
through a microscope

to get the gist of where
she is coming from
in her text
on human rights

Oh my humongous Suella
Sulla Braverman Braveheart

you will stand by your principles
fight for them lie
for them
kill and almost
die for
them (not
really, but it rhymes)

and rhyme is good
and euphemism too
and repetition
a zillion times

uncovering the frustrated
inner poet in you
(not that you would
ever stoop to elegy
not
the job of
Home Secretary)

to bewail
lost migrant lives.

DOLLDRUM

DOLLDRUM

we have drifted
we have drifted

an accursed mariner
at the till

      we have drifted
into a patch of dead sea

our island settling
somewhere
            between Shakespeare’s
garden and Eliot’s Wasteland

as droll and dyspeptic
      a dolldrum as
                    ever can be
zombified
      from head to toe

the specter that shadows
our humanity

FIRST STRIKE

FIRST STRIKE

aliens havs taken control
of Parow library

they are using their plasma
weapons to take out
all the poetry
classic novels and
books of philosophy

there were
not so many
but all are now gone

this alien high command
circling the northern suburbs
in their mothership
are openly
celebrating as
a titanic victory

the human race needs
to be even more unread
dull unimaginative
and stupid

to become the compliant
servants and slaves
the great
alien think tanks
are convinced we can be