POEM - The Cunt's Wait

nostalgia, impaled on a bumper 

hung, drawn, quartered
spattering its blood and sentiment
into the breeze of a national highway
like a necromancer's flail
infecting our countryside with
whatever can be born on air
upon every grey groin
and half dead sinew

this patriotic portrayal, is romanced
and strung up above my hearth too
forever glaring down
reprimanding me
for the lack of fealty
for being ashamed of my own homeland
for believing its virtues
have been handed over to the charlatans of algorithm
with little moral sense
for when it crossed over
the line of truth

turn on any screen
and there they will be
wanking these false mythologies
in my face 
whilst pleasuring themselves on prime time
the facts of history slip their anchor
leaving our identity cut
no deeper than a tattoo
with a half remembered resemblance
to the oracles of Albion.

I find I'm more troubled
when forced to see the world
only through the English mirror
its diseases and morbidity
displayed in roadside shrines
the supermarket flowers fastened
to railings, rotting on verges
commemorate a point of collision
with casualty or demise, whilst bellowing
for the full flavour of revenge
if there is no rejuvenation, then
'some fucker must pay.'

I mine the past and present
for less parochial characters
from history, culture, in the provocations
of difference, the sculpture
of landscape, of this and that, place
my sense of belonging
against a specific topography
these keep my silence neat
when the treasures of the patriot
are flagged up and given militias
to cheer on the goodhearted devotions
of citizens to lay down their lives
like leaves in autumn
with the promise of a future
of spring and family pride

drums will be banged, trumpets 
call forth loudly over our
ancestral bones, the spirit
rooted in the soil of a nations psyche
preserved in the rolling of its hills, our
felt supremacy, superiority, is stupefied
here is where the cunt's wait, they wait
to take your wrist, slash a chicken's vein over a
sacred stone or two, have the gasoline ready
light torches, fold their arms,
stand back and smirk.

I imagine on that day
trying hard to remind myself
of principles, of moral resolve
but mostly that I'll be too scared to
turn my back on anyone
braced and open to death
posted via a knife
whilst wanting nothing to do
with the creation of more misery
as those with hardened hearts, or
no hearts at all, snap the wings of truth
and throw them off a cliff
there will be then
no way to walk away from
or bargain with
the beckoning of Hades.

 
Stephen Lumb
written October 2020