Pointing and laughing

UKIP live in a world of playground politics - ganging up, pointing and name-calling - so I decided to wade in and do the same, but I hope more humorously. UKIP - mock them hard, then mock them some more. And there's a nod to one of my favourite poems. A recorded version can be found here.

Naming of prats

You portray playground politics,
all name-calling, throwing sticks
and stones
at easy targets,
rich kids more than old enough to know better
getting off on being dinner-money bullies,
good training for creepy little wankers
who grow up to be bankers
and bigots,
en masse victim-pickers.
Well, I can play that game –
no, not bludgeons today
but getting murky with words
and messing with your name,
‘cos I’ve spoken to one of your
old-school classmates,
not a friend, you don’t have them,
and he was more than happy to get low-brow,
said you were a twat then and a twat now,
a direct quotation,
first hand, no edit, unabridged
from someone who knew you
as Nigel Farage
‘til you were fourteen or so
and decided everyone should know
you as Farage.
What an arse.
Since then, 35 years of verbal discharge,
so it’s time we voted you in a new label,
a monicker more fitting,
I’ve got a few options to put on the table
so we’re able to pick what’s best
to rebrand a kipper,
a prejudicial pest
with an overactive bile duct,
sucked up to
by Nazis in carpet-slippers –
let’s see how well you stand, plucked
tarred and shamed,
named like a 70s krautrock band,
a poorly translated takeaway
or a disturbingly alternative stripper,

for today we have naming of prats.

Negro Farrago, Nudger Phalange,
Niggardly Fridge, Nougat le Flange,
Nigerian Farmyard, Numbskull Fubar,
Nasally Fidget, Knee-jerk Fucktard.
Nein-schnell Faux-fuhrer, None-shall Fear-race,
No-naff-all Frau-urge, Own-goal Frog-rage,
Nacho el Fart-arse, Nutjob Forecast,
Knickers-from-France, Unnatural Farce.
Nautch-girl Far-ugly, Nodule-of-Lard,
Schnitzel Most-flaccid, Knuckled Visage,
Nile-edge Farooq, No-go the Hajj,
Nazgul Vajazzle, Nine-hells Fromage.
Nach Eine-pfennig, Nickel For-forage,
Unchilled Flaneur, Nastier Frottage,
Nightgown Foul-fudge, Night-soiled Finger,
Nincompoop Large, Niggly Frigger.

Though I like ‘nazgul vajazzle’,
I figure
the last one suits
a purple-badged fruit-loop –
I want to niggle you with it,
jiggle it about
and watch as you wriggle.

Niggly Frigger NiggleNiggleNiggleNiggleNiggle
Niggly Frigger NiggleNiggleNiggleNiggleNiggle

Niggly Frigger, you’re right there’s something rotten
in the UK, but you’re wrong on what’s the problem,
it’s your bat-shit gang of National Front-bottoms,
but it won’t be long ‘til you’re gone and forgotten
by everyone, from Timbuktu to Totton
and their pets, all watching you lose the plot on
sex, race and climate – it seems you’re not too hot on

science, rationality or reason,
have you got some sort of cerebral lesion,
foaming at the mouth like you’ve swallowed caesium
you try to censor the world, treat evidence like treason
when it doesn’t suit, though you must have a lot on
your plate, so much to hate, when you’re not on
this planet, not a party, just a virulent blot on
our political landscape, a bigotry dot.com
bubble that’ll burst like a pus-filled spot on
some spoiled brat’s chin, dripping your ill-gotten
votes, grabbed by fear-mongering any old clot on

the electoral list,
hunched over Maggie’s grave with an aching wrist,
every day another gaffe piling up the grist
for my satirical mill, from the ramblings of your pissed
youth wing (one zitty little twit who’s never been kissed)
to your life-long loathers in their white-tinged mist,
who need knocking down with a lyrical fist
and mockery, make sure they’re thoroughly dissed
online, on our doorsteps, wherever they exist,
you cite freedom-of-speech so listen to this –
the public is awake, not somnambulists,
you’re rumbled, done, nowt more than a twist-
ed bucketful of isms, no libertarianists,
getting a ballot-box order to cease and desist.

You get the gist?

Who knows what's out there?

For a change, a little bit of micro-fiction...

Planet Esca

At first it was nothing more than numbers – subtle patterns rhythmically describing the dimming of already faint light from its parent star. Later, after untold terabytes of data were crunched by the SETI 2.0 quantum super-computer, the tell-tale specturm of modulated emissions proclaimed the presence of liquid water, clouds and even the red/infrared interface suggesting large-scale vegetation. Seas or large lakes, a functioning system of recognisable weather and abundant photosynthetic life – key indicators of a potentially habitable exoplanet.

Following desperate decades of debate, recrimination, invention and construction, it crystallised as the destination of the Granule, humanity’s first and only sporecraft, created with the last available energy and resources. The Sun still burned, and our but we had wasted too much to be able to build machines to harness its output.

Now, during the last expected generation before planetfall, our mathematicians tell us we are moving too fast, and have flown too far into the Great Maw to slow or turn sharply enough before it closes behind us. Escape is impossible, the ‘planet’ a bright dangling lure in the abyss. If only our ancestors had recognised that pair of fiery red giants for what they really were, watching our inexorable approach.

Inspired by Strummerville

Performing at Strummerville didn't only induce me to write about evil spaniels, it also got me writing some more political fare, a follow-up to this one. Audio version here.

Social surgery II

I’ve got a criminal mind but not criminal intent
and the sorts of convictions that’ll never be spent
on sucking up to bosses just to pay the rent
‘cos my sharply worded mockery’s sincerely meant.

When the law becomes a gag it’s our duty to defy,
shout out official secrets, broadcast far and wide,
expose the Selfservatives, the ConDems’ lies,
they only represent themselves, we’ve no reason to comply.

So, I fought the law and the lawman threatened,
winked at a crony and then a second,
there was no-one watching they must have reckoned
but their truncheons went limp when YouTube beckoned.

The powers-that-be, they like to throttle
out the life from dissent until they’ve got all
of us cowed, so whack ‘em with a champagne bottle,
a posh cosh to show that not all

Magnums are the same – ice creams, Dirty Harry,
Guy Fawkes in the Bullingdon, clubbing all the barri-
caded toffs, Moet on cranium,
crowds gather round, mushrooming like uranium

clouds – dark skies over Eton,
larval future ministers lie buggered up and beaten
by a black-masked man like Michael Keaton,
but not the sort of batman they expected to be meeting,

doesn’t care about the Joker, the Penguin, the Riddler
when there’s bricks to be lobbed at smarmy cufflink-fiddlers
like Hugo Boss ads made flesh in the middle of
Whitehall, soul-less suits who should consider a

change of career, break their drone-programming
like Red Dwarf’s Kryten, Ed Snowden, Bradley Manning,
pick up a spray-can, get culture-jamming,
give the world something more than fake orange tanning

and TV – reality’s much better
than game-shows and Noel Edmonds’ sweaters,
so don’t worry about whether ‘they’ will let us,
permission’s not required, and they are not our betters.

Hound of hell (with the softest ears)

Spaniels are all docile and friendly, right? Wrong - this one hails from the fiery doom-filled depths and manifested at the Strummerville all-dayer in The Joiners last weekend... Audio version here.

Hound of Hell (with the softest ears)

Sir Teddy Devil-Spaniel
swallowed the manual
on evil, and he liked the taste –
don’t let the soft ears fool you,
he’ll eat your face,
if you don’t offer him snacks,
he’ll bite and Darth Maul you,
piss on your remains
and in dog-speak call you
‘breakfast’, ‘cos that’s how he rolls,
a blood-sucking demon who’ll drain your soul,
then look at you like a harmless pup,
but approach with caution or he’ll fuck you up,
if you stare into his eyes you’ll pay the price –
give him onion rings as a sacrifice
but never let him get his fangs into your wrist,
so wear gauntlets and bring an exorcist.

Tell me a story, frackanory

At the weekend I was invited to perform at a wonderful all-day benefit gig for the Frack Free Solent campaign group. This happened about the same time that residents around Fernhurst in Sussex had effectively surrounded a fracking project with 'No Fracking' pledges despite creepy C*meron's attempts to lie, bribe, lie, cajole and lie about the pros (there aren't any) and cons. So, a good example of NGO and grassroots campaign groups working well together - and an excuse for me to write a poem especially for the event. Enjoy!


Frackanory

Oil-and-gas executives,
mosquitos in dengue-fever pinstriped suits
seek to pierce the earth,
to suck out its lifeblood
through a mechanical proboscis –
like malaria
they cause tremors
and make bad air,
pissing their toxins into the water
to create
an ungreen,
unpleasant land.

Hiding behind their
first-past-the-post parapets
and waving frackers’ flags,
politicians are Neros,
fiddling while our home burns,
spouting their free-market rhetoric
of selfishness and greed,
spilling lies about fuel bills,
land rights,
pollution,
climate change –
dinosaur minds
and tunnel-vision eyes
that can’t see
beyond the next
share-dividend report,
fossil fools whose fingers-in-the-ears
la-la-la-it’s-not-happening
means they can’t hear
the approaching roar
of the people –
we are their doomsday meteor,
and it’s time the Cuadrillasaurus went extinct.