Clown

by AL Franklin

You shaggy haired buffoon!

You are a worm of inappropriate persuasion,
values lost in folded layers of falsity.
When they inquire into your conduct, how will you explain
that Eden was smarter than you, as was Chamberlain,
but vanity made you surpass their worst mistakes
without an ounce of their integrity?

Who chose you to be our future?
Nothing you can do is in my name.
There is a special place in hell for you…
Every thing that works for you is wrong
and you have brought your curse to dwell in us:
our futures dust, our cakes a hatchery for weevils…

If you were not a fool, you would have fallen
on your sword by now;  but seriousness is out
so we must fail instead.   And what of us?
We are benighted people, bewitched by fantasies,
choking on confections of a half-invented past.
No longer lions, nor audience; now mute accomplices.

Circling

by AL Franklin

Not one but three kites spiralled,
around – but not of – Easter;
prospering offshoots of an earth
sliced thin for easier consumption…

Three red kites circling overhead,
intent on every ritual of their hunt
to bring hot death to prey beneath,
oblivious, in our suburban gardens;

As they ride a rising wave of carbon 6 –
our alienated friend and profligate –
the sleeping dragon wakens, shifting,
shivering, raging at its wounds…

Elite

by AL Franklin

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?

Come with me, you’re one of us!  You’ll be all right…
We used to run the country in one another’s interests
but now we’ll help them manage: by privilege, and bluff,
and an educated way of pretending things are fine…

Hold on to that – haha-haha, hahahaha!

Except we’ve carved an arc out of their sky
and cut their children’s futures to serve our unity,
which leaves them in a sticky spot (someone’s made a pig of it) –
But, we are the elite, we know, we cannot fail…

As lucky Dave said ~ sotto voce ~ ‘tum-te-tum’…
when he strolled away

Who knows what’s next?  Who cares!
The vicar’s awkward daughter will finish off the dregs,
being stubborn unto death, suborning what she stood for
on her remorseless journey in every wrong direction.
Never mind now!  Our life goes on – and after port
we can pretend, the country’s got its empire back!

~ While lucky Dave said, later on, ‘Je ne regrette rien’

And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Dunstable Downs

by AL Franklin

The wind was stronger than expected, at 22 and gusting –
it ran along the ridge, watering my eyes, finding each crevice
in my jacket, as I walked a mile or two along a distance trail.

Expecting to stoop, a hawk rode almost still above the scarp;
sliding, scanning, seeking prey that shrank in the shivering grass.
Then a red kite – larger, bolder, more assured – was equally unlucky
while I watched and slowed my pace, backed against the wind…

They were heedless of the gliders overhead: white thin-winged ideas
shaped in plastics, making tamer circles, grasping silently for height,
sidling past each other with an awkward grace, but lacking purpose –
except to fly;  or brush the wind-combed clouds, occasionally…

Observed, while also watching:  other people loitered behind glass,
sheltered for the moment to immerse themselves and share
in little social rituals of a complacent England;
to seek some precious comforts in their trust of yesterday…

But more than glass fragments us, for they reverse without a mirror
in a landscape carved by ice, reshaped again by climate changes.
Meanwhile, outside, the wind blows harder.