The creeping thistle

Creeping thistles linger long on my mind
as does filth beneath my fingernails,
requiring a rare depth of scrubbing.

This life amongst the elements rails,

in parallel with tribulating gusts,

against manufactured trials.

The roots of the creeping thistle thrust

far and wide, long and deep,

as the shovelsteel blunts and rusts.

Each stroke into the Earth merely reaps

an infinite spread of the spiny Cerberus,

no longer merely Hades’ keeper.

His mane of writhing snakes bursts from humus

goading this futile whack-a-mole con.

Yet, inch by inch, the beacon of summer

draws Herculean strength from dilated dawn.

As the world bathes in light and lettuce,

the creeping thistle has not yet won.

Election 2024: Rishi Sunak and the naughty step of inconsequence

 If I'm made to recall Rishi Sunak

    I imagine him sucking his thumb,

    one hand under his bum,

    and he's sat on the naughty step.

    The naughty step of inconsequence.

    It's not one of those from school

    with its cheap plastic tiles and rubber,

    that would be beneath these fools - 

    only in another universe, intellegis?

    No, Rishi's is carpeted, soft, plum,

    but a step's a step, he'll blubber.

    "Oh, but it's just not fair", he'll blubber.

    "Boris stole my sweeties,

    and Rwanda was his treatise."

    "Pants on fire!" Boris will scoff.

    He's just one step above and behind,

    on the naughty step of incompetence.

    He's not far to land, if he falls,

    to the soft, plum step of inconsequence.

    "Suella made me do it!"

    "ANTISEMITE!" Suella will screech

    from somewhere imperceivable,

    high on the naughty step of cruelty.

    A step so far removed it feels unreal.

    "Now now, children," will croak Keir

    from the lectern of equivalence.

    "I don't care who started it,

    what matters is I'm here to finish it."

    And with that he'll take his place,

    placidly and unconvincingly,

    on the podium of intransigence.

News porn

An Oakeshott to the face

hands on the Hancock

revenge news the new taste

lock down on lock

gargle the clickbait

hands up Hancock

an Oakeshott to the face,

revenge news, gargle ejaculate.

Border business

Pop, pop, pop

drops the copper

from another hood,

a bygone era

aye so we hoped.

Hope, hope, hope

what a whopper

aye came to blows,

chaos on the border

run to the meadows.

Sop, sop, sop

aye came a cropper

now who's in the mood

for the show stopper,

pop, pop, pop

drops another whopper.

Image first uploaded in English Wikipedia as en:Image:NIrelandDerryFreeJM.jpg by en:User:Guinnog

Derry/Londonderry, 1986

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

The Sturgeon

Must we really now contemplate

the passing of sturgeon to char or skate?

The sturgeon effectuates caviar,

preferable to swill-supped salmon by far

but a dying breed, its rivers dammed,

a future less than certain. Drammed

right down to the cold, hard marble,

I hear her voice in the ether warble

a melancholy reel of reason sounder

than the garbled nonsense of the southern flounder;

The sturgeon whiskered and wise,

the flounder flatly lies. 

The cuckoo's bronze egg

Today I spied a cuckoo fly

above a golden cignet's lair

and for a while she settled there.

She left a bronze-laid alloyed egg,

for the swans had blinded eyes,

and she cackled at her own audacity.

Unwittingly they nursed that egg,

tainted though it made the nest,

as when the bronze defiler hatched

he slew the chicks and flew,

where he knew best,

at one with the pigs in the sky.

Not my family

I cannot feel sad. How can I be?

I did not know her, she didn't know me.

Understandably, some mourn.

She has been an evergreen, if slowly withering presence.

But she was born into luxury. Sheer, entitled luxury.

She had dibs on all the land under my feet.

And so does he.

No-one made them serve, if that's what it is.

My taxes paid for it.

Can we leave it as it is.

An antique.

A relic.

Queen Elizabeth II,

the best, and last, of a brazen bunch who never had a right to rule over me.

Rishi rich and thick Lizzy

No chance of win if inflation sticks,

Rishi rich says, as thick Lizzy

strays down the Tory u bend

where it's hard to bleach,

never mind brush,

so deep down.

I wonder who'll clean it up?

A new election dawns,

Rishi rich plucks pennies from the pawns,

golden ducks trot through Tunbridge lawns,

quacking maniacally, guffaw,

they don't know any better, the poor.

Amber Heard and Johnny Depp, and the terrible tale of power

Some say, forgive them,

that Amber Heard,

or misheard,

mutually abused

that jolly pirate rogue.

I don't buy that.

If I bought that,

I'd have to conclude that Ukraine

mutually attacked

the Russian invaders.

One must not hit back, you know.

Take it quietly.

Think of England, or Putin. Something.

Just deal with it.

But in the plays of power

that's the narrative that sustains.

Shit stains on the bed (disproven),

for some,

proof she had it coming.

Millions in Gaza displaced,

their homes taken away,

their schools and hospitals razed.

Yet mere stones and miscellaneous rockets,

against the missiles and air defences,

brand the abused the aggressors

according to the oppressors.

That's the poison of power,

this narrative that's hard to shake.

And so the the popular opinion rests

with the one they like to think

is their funny, pirate friend.

The other?

At her wits' end.

"And you dare to call me a terrorist,

while you look down your gun,

and I think of all the deeds that you have done.

You have plundered many nations,

divided many lands,

you have terrorised their people,

you ruled with an iron hand

and you brought this reign of terror

to my land."

Stuffed

Stuff everywhere, this planet,

too much stuffing stuff,

hardly room to move,

hardly time to stuff,

sake for stuffing stuff.

They stuff it in the mail,

needless paper stuff,

full of my stuffing details,

so I stuff it with more stuff,

gathering stuffing dust.

Stuff for the sake of stuffing stuff,

stuff stuff stuff stuff stuff,

get me off this planet, please,

to stuff up someone else's stuff.