From the Erotic to the Idiotic
In starting this I'm feeling somewhat scared.
Ottava Rima is a form that's been
Used to good effect by poets who've fared
Rather better than I have; have been seen
To well succeed by being well prepared,
Writing something comic or obscene
To voice complaints or a criticism
Couched in a caustic witticism.
The master of them all of course was Byron,
Trundling on for sixteen thousand lines,
Mainly, it appears, with a hard-on;
All through Don Juan you can read the signs.
I hear some say though, 'I do beg your pardon,
Where's the evidence he so inclines
To write throughout in a sexual fervour.
He's less like Eros, more of a Minerva,
Goddess of verse, wisdom, strategic warfare.'
I suppose that's true to a large extent
But what, after all then, do we care
About the character of his true intent
in being so satiric, with such flair?
It's very unlikely that he would repent,
Retract his underlying eroticisms,
Replacing them with courtly mannerisms.
So, just as Byron sought to undermine
Hypocrisies inherent in his times,
Should we not then, also sharply shine
A piercing light today on similar crimes
Committed not in your name, nor in mine;
Those negligently, cruel paradigms
Of power, designed for the hegemonic,
The devious, deviant, selfishly moronic?
Johnson, Bezos, Bolsonaro, Trump,
To name but four of the perpetrators,
Head a stinking army, nay a rump,
Of psychopathic, snivelling people haters,
Hoovering up the profits, as the slump
Is hitting labourers, the wealth creators,
Driving millions into destitution,
Smothered by a capitalist pollution.
This Ottava Rima effort is pathetic
Compared to Byron's brilliant Magnum Opus
In which he is poetically athletic,
A swirling cauldron filled with hocus pocus,
Learned, comic, endlessly eclectic,
Never losing pertinence or focus.
Would he were here now with his sharpened claws
To scratch the eyes out of those bloated boors.
But he, of course, was more a Tory than
The politicians and poets he sought to trash.
Raised more a lord than a common man,
His sympathies are, likely, less to clash
With the monsters of our devious plan
Than we who would indict them in a flash.
To use his searing wit, all things Byronic,
Could undermine our aims. Now that's ironic!
But the plot to use a sharp Ottava Rima
To savage all things oligarchical,
Is pregnant in this adolescent scheme, a
Side swipe at the trad monarchical
(Perhaps I'm just a poor deluded dreamer)
State that's verging on the farcical.
As Lenin had it, there's a fine solution:
In Greece, Byron died for Revolution!
Let's take them one by one, these devious infants:
So Johnson first, designated Boris,
Building, despite himself, a stout resistance
In us common folk who've not read Horace
As he has. At least, that's his insistence;
More a classical flower, than a florist,
Vainglorious popinjay we should require
To shuffle off into his own satire.
A blockheaded buffoon, an unctuous creep,
A man who lied his way to head the Tory
Party, while most of us were fast asleep,
Infighting among ourselves, (another story),
Elected to oversee the State's upkeep
But acting like the Womble Tobermory.
Yet underneath his foolish, clown-like antic,
Flows a dark and dangerous semantic.
It's a strain reflected in that Bezos creature,
An exploiter making depredations on
Each worker picking a book, or other feature
To reinforce his empire, Amazon.
'Do as I command, or I will beat 'yer!'
They just cannot do right for doing wrong
Inside his evil factories of the cursed.
His form of exploitation is the worst.
Designed to manufacture profits, obscene
By any standard of civil or moral code,
The employment contracts he's invoked have been
Introduced to undermine, erode
All human dignity at work. We've seen
A fetid jubilation, a la mode,
Among the tax avoiding oligarchy
Celebrating his malign malarky.
So what of Bolsonaro? What a jerk!
A fascist placeman, product of a coup
Displacing all the socialising work
Done to favour those, like me and you
Who don't own either Jaguar or Merc,
In the favelas. So we ask, just who
Will, one day, bring this criminal to trial,
Wiping off his vile and hideous smile?
Of course, the situation in Brazil
Is mirrored in those South American states,
Where humanising work, used to instil
Just distribution, is overturned. The fate
Of millions of the poor, drowned in the swill
Produced by CIA-backed gangster mates
Of US President (The Gangster) Trump,
That preening, self-regarding Heffalump.
Trump as President, you'd hardly believe it!
Yet perhaps the Yanks really do deserve 'im.
Not those, of course, those that would retrieve it
But all the racists, those that would preserve 'im
to mouth the hatred as they do conceive it.
Most of us, it's true, would rather swerve 'im,
Stoutly chuck him into History's litter.
(At the risk of sounding satisfyingly bitter!)
But I'm justly sad that such could be elected,
Whose message is crude, insanely autocratic.
Instead of tending to those who should be protected,
He'd rather promote the semi-automatic.
Let's hope there'll soon be sense, he's deselected
And we see the last of this phoney aristocratic,
No good piece of putrefying shit.
(I hope I haven't overstated it!)
I'll now conclude this Italian form of verse;
I do not have the stamina of a Byron.
I know it's bad but it could get much worse,
Won't earn me any pension to retire on!
Be fearful, though, you despots, you who curse
Humanity: you will feel the iron
In our depleted souls eventually.
You'll be overthrown and we'll be free.
Poems, Polemicks and Licks 