Take Back Control
Slumped in doorways.
Shuttered in our cups.
We are in crisis.
Like clapped-out lawns, all cold-snap withered.
Dull roots without the chance of spring rain,
or the possibilities of coffee on some Italian piazza.
The trees above are just as bad.
Their rhetoric hissing of venal days to come.
For some, the only way is back, retreat,
to a hall of mirrors filled with Boudica, Churchill,
and a steam engine driven roughshod across a world map coloured London bus red.
Others look up
through smug Danish-designed skylights
at foreign-named winds and clouds,
and listen out for Schiller, Ludwig van,
for the threshing of peace, an end to cheap holidays.
For the perfect time to say,
“I told you so.”
We cut our nose to spite our face.
We throw our fish back into the sea.
We don’t want to watch.
But we cannot look away.
