This Unelected Leader
A poetic response to recent words by the British PM
This unelected leader
warns of extremists
in a condescending tone,
eyes blank as stone,
to a public who never endowed him his throne
(with as much human charm as a CGI clone)
voice a drone with robotic demeanour.
As he speaks,
from the cosseted hub of his Westminster clique,
it’s been months since our sleeps have been dreamless.
I wake short of breath
from nightmares steeped in sweat, death and screams.
Weeks pile onto weeks -
anguish on phones seamlessly seeps to the mind’s inner screen.
Wreckage of homes bombed to rubble and dust -
pictures of dead children
layered with quotes espousing feverish bloodlust.
Enough blood has been shed to fill streams
uploaded worldwide via digital beams
and it runs through our heads as we work, as we wake,
as we hurt, as we shake,
as we turn to each other and try not to break
and ask ourselves: what will it take?
When will it stop?
What words or which phrase must one say;
and how much must our human race ache
for the penny to drop?
This unelected leader
warns of an invisible mob
in a flailing attempt to hold onto his job,
for the cards not to topple
as he teeters at the top.
Encased in black railings
keeps his teeth sunk deep into our state
popularity failing,
assailing the news to stoke hate.
Time to tighten a fist
around this population whose pain can’t be bottled,
love and hatred run hot as the sun
and it’s too much to hold.
In more ways than one,
this winter’s been cold.
Now he fights to squeeze cries and pleas
grief that won’t look away from the horror it sees
into a compliant, quiet mould.
Tries to swaddle us like he’s been coddled,
to sit down and do as we’re told -
un-obstructing his clutching at gold.
When we march on the streets
with a vision for peace,
We do so with prayer
for this dark night to cease.
We are Jews, we are Muslims, we are Christians too,
folk white, black and brown,
people who look just like you.
We are young, we are old, we are gay, straight and trans
with signs against genocide clasped in our hands.
From diverse social classes,
of disparate stories and colour,
to which cabinets of Tories stand demographically duller.
We are parents and siblings,
students and teachers,
sharing frayed and desperate hope
as far as it reaches
from London’s grey glass hulk
to Gaza’s battered beaches
from these hearts, in which peace is,
to humanity’s shattered pieces.
We are loud and soft-spoken,
healthy and disabled,
crowds embodying the democracy
that your rhetoric rends fabled
whose significant features
are protest and free speech;
whose structures your corruption
serves clearly to breach.
Now we stand at a junction
staring into destruction
and democracy seems to be ceasing to function.
We are fractured and knackered,
combining our voices,
calling leaders to make
more compassionate choices.
Though you’re partly a joke,
another unfit prime minister,
your tenure’s trajectory
also reeks of the sinister.
A puppet who’s never stood up for a cause
allied to the doctrine “protect you and yours”
reading off cue cards
with a palpable lack of conviction,
fanning the flames
of factional friction.
Boarding-school diction thinly veils
the fact that there’s no captain manning the sails
just a quest for ambition,
that’s brittle and frail.
People pawns in the games
that you play in your tower
inhabiting a land of fiction
where points are more money, more power.
As snipers aim bullets into children’s heads.
As mothers are murdered while queueing for bread.
As babies suffocate, starved, in hospital beds.
We have run out of language
to honour the scale of dead.
Eyes twitch and burn with oceans of tears,
maddened by how history refuses to learn
repeating the traumas
written into past years.
This unelected leader reconstitutes soundbites of language
inept to address tides of righteous anguish,
protecting privilege in which he feels entitled to languish
feeding us against them
establishment ousting the other
hangovers of empire’s missions to vanquish
though the snakes lie
underneath number 10’s covers.
This unelected leader
preys off existing suspicions:
“you can protest but only on certain conditions”.
We must ask his permission, it seems,
to speak against obliteration of lives and of dreams.
A stain on time’s book, pages scarred and marked;
days lighten, but still, it feels dark.
I am questioning what it means to be a person
in a system which sooner sees suffering worsen
than healed
definitions so slippery
losing grip on what’s real.
I cradle an ancient whisper
of tikkun olam
the intent of repairing this world
a road we can carve
in the midst of despairing,
know that each human face reflects back
the being I am
a kinship apparent
ripe with more truth than the lines that they parrot.
We cannot meet cruelty with more of the same
won’t move forwards sinking down to contempt,
down to shame.
Light must be our addition
to attempts to incite societal partition,
to frighten and silence,
segregate us into atomised islands.
Both gunfire and words foster violence.
And though some would wish to see democracy stifled
just as breath is cut short at the butt of a rifle
there’s a pulse in the core: a soft, loving heart
despite every force that would tear us apart.
Let it lift and guide;
let us plant brighter seeds
in thought and in deed,
in protest and presence and meetings and art
as we weep for these wounds, watch them bleed,
footfall not to recede
nor to drift back to sleep
trying to fathom empty spaces
unresolved, gaping, deep.
