The Day John Major Made Me Cry

Jeremy's a gentle man,
a talker, not a shouter, and

we need that after all these years
of Bunter-baiting school-yard jeers,

but sometimes when I watch the toffs
dismiss him like a skivvy's cloth

I wish he had a brash side-kick
to tweak the rich man's ears and stick

a little of the pain he's caused
up George's nose. It'd give them pause

if Jeremy's front-bench fog-horn mate
was a super hero in a cape,

its crinkled leather a telling match
for a geography teacher's elbow patch.

Okay, I'm dreaming, the voice we get
is a strangulated Tory wet,

but at least he knows it can't be right
for kids to go hungry and shiver all night,

so he's gone back to his soap-box role –
does he fear his ghoulish heirs lack souls? –

to quack a little old-school sense
at merchant banking's battlements.

Oh, it sticks in my craw to carry his bat,
but if that's what it takes, then I'll take that.

Psalm

In the wastes of winter's exile,
an army of peace will meet.

Hunger stalks the tenements.
Wreaths come down from the doors.
There are queues at the rack-rent lender's,
No silver left under the floor.

In the wastes of winter's exile,
an army of peace will meet.

Roads open up and swallow us.
The municipal era is dead.
Debt, like an old dog, follows us.
Capital breakfasts in bed.

In the wastes of winter's exile,
an army of peace will meet.

O, why is the library closing?
O, why's there no pool anymore?
Why are the bank accounts frozen?
Why is there money for war?

In the wastes of winter's exile,
an army of peace will meet.

My finger is raised like a sundial.
We sing round a fire in the street.
In the wastes of winter's exile,
An army of peace will meet.

In the wastes of winter's exile,
an army of peace will meet.

Robert Maslen is from Bradford. He's a linguist and researcher with a particular interest in metaphor. Previously he taught English in the UK and Mexico. His poems and stories have appeared in The Frogmore Papers, Flash, Krax, the Bridport Prize anthology and elsewhere.

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