An Impassioned Poetry Interlude

You’d think and you’d be right to say

Fair people who sit now before me,

That not on Christmas nor any day

Deserves someone to freeze; inform me

How a modern major nation –

Proud and red and white and blue

With history of deserved damnation

(No, United States, not you) –

Forsakes and freezes folk so freely –

Heating bills are tripled – really

Tax cuts for the rich ideally

That’ll see us through.

Attribute to much more than malice

Such evil plans and know these callous

Cowards letting children starve

Can fuck right off and carve

Their names onto | the fiery walls

Of Dante’s bottom ninth circle of hell,

And sit there with the other traitors, listen to them tell

Us all, these idiotic bastards,

‘It’s all in our best interest’

Say their stupid faces plastered

On every tiny, massive screen and billboard and TV,

That all will soon be fine with our precious economy.

And all this from a government whose prime minister’s ascent

To power was decided by just 0.3 percent

Of the 67 million who call England their home.

And how are we doing again? Well fine, let’s check the tome

Of evidence – the NHS and energy and debt,

The cries and shouts and pleas for help that drown the internet.

To be or not to be a country functioning at all

Lest our legacy be little more than a faint icy scrawl

That reads: Here lies Great Britain, in all its short-lived glory.

All those who lived within it wished for a much different story.