Were the two world wars a joke or a figment of my imagination?
Did our great-uncles not choke for the segment of the tragic nation
that sprawls across the wealth pump and showers in its outgush?
Did they limp through a swamp so their great-nephews and -nieces could
be airbrushed
out of the oil-based fresco of celestial economic growth
for being the refuse and faeces of the new empire? I fix both
my baggy eyes on today’s fiasco and a bestial tomorrow
where curfews on our species’ spiritual worth unearth fresh sorrow,
fresh lines of backfiring livers, lungs and hearts frogmarched from their pillows
to rolling metallic rivers of slavery, and quivering crutch-propped widows
bent over components of components of bruschetta-slicing machines
while history teachers in fetters tug levers that pulverise coffee beans.
If the welfare state, in a state of farewell,
becomes a fairground only for estates of stately wealth
who can well pay the fare to wells of stately care, well,
it’s fair to state fair England’s in a state of ill health.
And while Aneurin Bevan’s nightmare volleys him round his sarcophagus,
while oligarchs gloat above trolleys parked loaded with infections of
the oesophagus
or cancers requiring bank transfers before they are captured, while cash-
registers chirrup
as cuff-linked and straight-collared mobsters grab dollars for lobster-flavoured
cough syrup,
while weapons inspectors vanish into thin air with an abracadabra,
while, ripping to bits what’s left of humanity’s social fabric from Basra
to Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch,
the vampires of English robbery still gobble ambitiously for wads of dosh,
I can see a crack in the empire from Solway Firth up to Berwick-on-Tweed.
Bonnie Scotland! Brek loose frae the whittle-tuithed flichtermoose flaffin
aroond yer heid,
that syphons yer blid, turnin ye tae a widden an fushionless automaton!
The Tory plan for yer raffie wee land is a shitehoose bowl ye shoud vomit in!
Skelter awa frae the murtherers o society that tether an taigle ye,
wi yer freedom yet hale, an as fest as yer kiltit an ginger-hairt shankies can
haigle ye!
With no welfare state our fate is workhouses, treadmills, toil and trouble,
and burning witches. Those without riches, remember your centuries
of struggle!
All hail the welfare state! If, in a state of farewell,
it becomes a fairground only for estates of stately wealth
who can well pay the fare to wells of stately care, well,
it’s fair to state fair England’s in a state of ill health.
