School

Who put the “sub” into “subversion” and “subculture”?

Was it the same people

Who built schools:

Those prisons

Where kids are tortured

And brainwashed

Into being “good” conforming citizens –

Factory fodder

Trained to sit in lines

Labouring at meaningless tasks,

Questioning nothing?

So still we are ruled

By Tory Grandees and Brussels Bureaucrats

Keeping us in our place:

Social Control
Over Job Centre slaves.

It’s the same the whole world over:

The rich wallowing in luxury

While the poor starve to death

Exposed to pitiless winds.

For once words fail me

About our Unfair World.

Children dying everywhere

While fatcats feed in a frenzy.

No wonder people talk of Revolution

And terrorist plots.

Our air is full of carbon

While trees are cut

Down

For seas of palm oil.

We need to reconsider

What we do

In all our ways.

Enough is enough.

It’s time to nurture nature

As denizens of Planet Earth.

Paul Butters

© PB 23\11\2018.

Stalemate

Remoaners to the left, Brextremists to the right,

Theresa “Maggie” May has an uphill fight.

I can’t see her lasting many more days,

Unless she changes her stubborn ways.

Theresa is an immovable object.

Her hubby must be totally henpecked.

Trying to please just everyone,

Annoying all is what she’s done.

Right now she is UK Prime Minister,

But her own back benchers are getting sinister.

Some say she’s sold us down the river,

A thing for which they can’t forgive her.

Others claim she’s gone too far,

As we should stay just where we are.

Some see Europe as our friend,

But others say the UK we must defend.

Ireland is a sticking point

A thing that’s gonna rock the joint.

They don’t know where to put the border,

Without causing grief and disorder.

What an impasse, feels like stalemate,

Are we heading to be a slave state?

Who knows what’s going to happen next?

No wonder we are all perplexed.

Paul Butters

© PB 17\11\2018.

 PS the word "Brextremist" was used in The Commons this week by Labour MP Angela Eagle so I "borrowed" it.

Words

Armies of words gather in my head

To march so boldly onto the page.

They work their wonders

Who knows how?

Why they pick me as their channel

For their landing craft

I’ll never know.

Some accident of birth:

Genetic fluke –

For which I take no credit –

Makes me nectar to these ants

That line themselves into verse.

Compulsion drives me to write

As salmon must jump those water falls

To return to their spawning grounds.

I have to speak, or rather type:

Express myself

No matter what,

Whether good or bad.

Is there a cure for this affliction of mine?

Can I ever stop myself from writing?

I very much doubt it.

Paul Butters

© PB 16\11\2018.