Sunday, 7 July 2024

Stammer

 

Stammer

 

I didn’t, you see? And I don’t think many did.

Oh, I put the cross, prayed for a loss,

the omens looking good. But, truth told,

I preferred the one who was older, smeared

anti-semite when Glastonbury cheered.

Who knows? At the airport I met by chance

a journalist, Al Jazeera: he was British, too.

Told me he’d led your lot on a merry dance,

removed the whip once his back was striped,

he was just a launch pad; you took flight.

And he stood for something, anything,

not just a stammer between that, this

and someday, one-day. It was with a yawn

I picked up and used the stubby pencil,

examined options, licked its graphite tip,

tossing the pollster outside an ironic quip,

after slipping a quick one into the box.

Most of us are underwhelmed, I think,

a sort of ennui, a lack of joy in repetition,

you don’t strike hard as someone with mission

in motion, or emotion, even - lacking fire;

I heard you said politics is a force for good

with all the conviction of a block of wood.

A landslide built on quicksand foundations:

the alternatives were just worse, is all,

like oily stagnant pools on brownfield sites

with sickly sweet scents of terminal decline,

for now, a sandcastle majority will do us fine,

after covid, boozegate, Brexit and austerity,

made möbius strips out of roads to prosperity

and all the railways permanently on strike,

will the last person to leave turn out the light?


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