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Here’s a satire that’s bound to win friends in high places…

Survival of the Richest

The Roman poet Juvenal

Described this species very well.

They didn’t go extinct in Rome –

They’re breeding now, right here, at home.

A very showy sub-species

Are thriving as ‘Celebrities’.

Their antics always make the news,

Their face sells products they don’t use,

They’re even on the BBC –

Presenters eat your licence fee,

And chat show hosts grab so much loot

You could retire on its cube root.

The sporting types run round a pitch,

Like gladiators, fit and rich,

Now chasing balls instead of men,

Their habits altered since back then

(An adaptation that’s proved clever

Since fans can now be milked forever)

But none of them walks down my street

To show us his expensive feet.

Let’s not omit the rock stars, too -

They’re each worth more than Sutton Hoo –

Who party in exclusive clubs

(Your mortgage wouldn’t meet the subs)

And watch the supermodels pout,

Help break their fall when they pass out,

Then after several lines of coke

Laugh loud at Harry’s royal joke.

Their nightly habits are now known

(No part of them remains unshown)

But there are many other types

Who don’t display such vivid stripes,

Don't visit Ascot every year

To preen their feathers with their peers;

These native rich are much more shy,

Less often glimpsed by passers-by,

Much nearer homo sapiens

Than some hack’s telephoto lens;

Though being drab and more obscure

Gives no-one proof their breed is pure -

They’re sometimes seen round London squares

With foreign non-dom billionaires;

The houses there are not main homes -

These wealthy breeds need lebensraum,

A mansion somewhere in the sticks,

A farm where they won’t need to mix,

With game, which they can shoot in peace,

Or flocks of sheep, which they can fleece -

That’s why they buy up half the Downs,

While most of us are crammed in towns.

Yet though the rich own all the land,

From some estates we’re not all banned -

A new domesticated breed

Has found an easy way to feed.

They know we’ll gawp at what they’ve got -

And entrance fees can cure dry rot.

Another breed, called ‘tax exiles’

Has now abandoned country piles -

They’ve flown off where it’s warm and dry,

Migrating from the public eye,

But no breed ever pays much tax,

And if we moan, they say, “Relax!

The stuff we buy gives you a job

And keeps you off the streets, you yob.”

(It’s called the trickle-down effect,

The crumbs they drop, we intercept.)

On roads, they go by limousine

Or Chelsea tractors like the Queen,

On trains and planes they go first class

Where they won’t see my hairy arse;

But most prefer a private jet

Where there’s no terrorist threat.

They often berth a private yacht

To entertain some old despot;

In Winter at a ski resort,

They drink their Pimms and bray and snort.

Their kids all go to public schools

But never swim in public pools.

It’s said you can get pretty bored

Being the offspring of a lord,

Better though, a young trust-fundy

Yawning in your bed on Monday

Than waiting for a crowded bus

With common kids who fight and cuss.

Daddy’s something in the City

Raiding someone else’s kitty.

Another million in the pot:

And if it’s not, well then, so what?

Mummy, fresh from Chanel boasts

She wears these blouses once at most.

She has a thousand pairs of shoes

For all her sexy rendezvous;

Handbags too, for each occasion:

A crocodile for each liaison.

It’s hard to be a trophy wife;

You have to shop to get a life.

Of many breeds of nouveaux riche,

Consultants have a special niche:

Whilst cutting bureaucratic fat

They’ve found a rich, new habitat.

From Aberdeen to Hay-on-Wye

They suck the public sector dry.

All services ‘do business’ now

And as they kill each sacred cow

They sell a truly scrawny pup:

But long before it’s gone tits up,

They’ve moved on like a hungry ghost,

Already stuck to some new host.

Professionals are just as bad -

Alas! Not like Sir Galahad,

They ape the habits of the wealthy

In ways that are no longer stealthy -

A grand won’t make a lawyer sneeze;

For fifty grand, he’s Socrates.

And if he does pro-bono work

There’s bound to be some major perk.

The doctors now, and dentists too

Go part-time while their patients queue;

When paid so well, why work all hours?

They must preserve their healing powers…

So head off for a private clinic

For fees that are ionospheric;

The NHS trained them for nowt

And in return they all pig out.

But bankers get the gold award,

Surviving even brass-necked fraud:

Creating cash in cyberspace,

Deleting it without a trace,

Then asking us to mint some more

-We should have known what that was for!

To quantatively ease their fear

That bonuses might disappear.

So when you see them, snouts in trough,

Why do you let them rip you off,

Why don’t you pass some stringent laws

To make their income more like yours?

Because they’re in The Commons, too -

You voted for them, didn’t you?

When sitting on that cushioned bench,

Corruption loses its sick stench,

And promises of seats on boards

Or later in the House of Lords

Ensure they join the ruling class,

Their principles put out to grass -

Election promises soon die

When they offend the Old School Tie

And legislation rarely sticks

When wealthy types can’t get their kicks.

We have to hope they’re not too bent,

They’re all we’ve got, this one per cent,

They’ve led us to Niagara Falls

And left us dangling by the balls,

So buy their papers, read their sleaze,

Pay for footballers’ striptease,

Put your pittance in their banks,

All the interest you’ll get is “Thanks!”

What thanks though, really, is it,

To listen to some balding expat

When interviewed, talk soft of Blighty

Before he got so high and mighty?

All misty-eyed, he’ll reminisce…

Then jet back off to Island Bliss.

What’s that they say? What would we do

If we had all that money too?

If we won sixty million now,

Would any of us live in Slough?

Would we just give it to the poor?

Well, no…but would we ask for more?

As industries need oil wells,

As cancers need new tumour cells,

Would we expect our wealth to mount,

And call that growth “offshore account”?

Not us! We’d settle for a dream

That doesn’t need a Ponzi scheme,

For unlike Machiavelli,

Our consciences aren’t bypassed jelly;

We lack that vital, selfish gene,

That Gordon Gekko subroutine,

Which twists the meaning of our words,

Turns good intentions into turds,

Till “Sharing” sounds like it’s unclean,

“Equality” becomes obscene,

“Not fair” translates as “Envious”

And “Caring” means “to make a fuss”.

O do not listen to the prick

Who thinks you’re poor because you’re thick,

Who gets a billion, then wants two

And thinks your world is his to screw.

Congenitally ill-content,

Instinctively esurient,

Evolved to never have enough

Of stocks or land or cash or stuff,

The rich are not like me and you,

And soon they’ll own our bodies too –

They’re patenting our DNA,

And as we're born, they’ll make us pay.

Landscape Angel

You dare to doubt me (how can I exist

Without physical form?) when your own thoughts,

Which are more immaterial than mist,

Weigh as heavy on you as lead apports.

You move through me as through a field, whose source

Is every life-form here that I caress;

I emerge from each of them, the tiny force

That comes from their sense of connectedness,

Summed and combined into an ambience,

A permeating presence you can feel,

A vague, distributed intelligence,

Characteristic of this place, and real.

When this landscape was young and immature,

My sense of who I am was weak and blurred;

I had no notion then what I was for,

I flitted like a hungry hummingbird,

But each new season’s growth sharpened my focus,

Until I found my focal point and knew

I had at last discovered my purpose,

Why I was here and what I had to do,

Using senses quite different from yours,

For I explore the subtle energies

That shower into the world like gauze

From rocks and springs and from the tops of trees,

And I apply them to each wound or tear,

Stitching the tapestry of this terrain,

Rerouting the arteries, to repair

And add fertility to my domain.

I heal the damage done by flood or drought

Or storm or Man, I am this landscape’s soul,

Disseminating harmony throughout,

Seeking always to benefit the whole,

Over the oak and deepest shading yew,

Over the buzzard wheeling in the sky,

Over the deer, the badger and the shrew,

Over the beetle and the dragonfly

I hover, like a synchronizing beat,

I conduct, I collectively inspire.

In me, all aspirations meet,

All separate voices join in my choir,

I carve the niche where each of them can thrive

And here unfold its deva’s will-to-be,

In my community much more alive

Than if not part of my great symphony.

I choreograph and I orchestrate,

I write them a score, I give them a key,

But I am neither master of their fate

Nor am I maker of their quiddity,

For when any one of them goes out of tune

It loses all its connectivity,

It’s hidden from me like the stars at noon,

No longer part of my reality.

So you humans too, for the same reason

Are very often undetectable

To me, locked fixedly in the prison

Of your own concerns, and insensible

To your interrelatedness with things.

You make no effort to communicate

Or listen to the song that all life sings,

Only looking to control and dominate.

The balanced ecosystem I create,

Its microclimates and its living soil,

Hit by disaster will regenerate;

Your monocultures merely turn to spoil.

With senses that are incompatible,

With natures that must breathe a different air,

No meeting of our minds is possible,

There is no common language we can share.

To know me, you must first of all be still

And disengage your busy thinking part,

Forget you have an independent will,

Forget your head, and focus on your heart…

If you can slow your rhythm down to mine,

Our fields can find a common resonance,

Our feelings and intentions can combine,

I can expand your mind’s circumference

And give you the imaginative means

To bring to life the hidden work I do.

Your forebears conjured visionary scenes

Of elementals, alien to you,

But fauns and fairies, nymphs and gnomes of old,

Were perceived with the power of a sixth sense

Which in you has atrophied and gone cold,

In thrall, as you now are, to instruments

Which cannot show what lives in your mind’s eye

Or measure what is missing in a man

Who even lacks the wit to wonder why

He’s lost his place in Mother Nature’s plan.

Destructiveness for you is now the norm.

I have no nerves to feel what’s done to me,

I sense you mostly as I sense a storm,

I feel a loss in my vitality.

Yet still I find among you humans few

Who are capable of more; who will sit

And contemplate instead of passing through,

With thoughts that show you are the opposite

Of me: intensely individual,

Noticing all the ‘differences between’

Rather than what is shared and mutual,

Tending always to analyse a scene,

Distinguishing identities:- of trees,

The poplar from the beech, or beech from lime,

How hoverflies and wasps are not like bees,

How the scent of basil is distinct from thyme.

My lines of force must fluctuate and flow,

But I can help you fix me into place,

You need an avatar, a god you know,

You need a living form, you need a face,

Am I the White Lady or am I Pan?

Look for me as I come out of the mist.

Believe you can see me, because you can.

Look for me now: I'm here. I do exist.

Water Witchery

Urged

To quench a growing thirst

While wandering the pathless, high plateau, I'm

Tempted

By a sun-dyed headstream

Cascading as an ever-falling flow,

Captured

As it coolly waives before

Its deepest pools of darkest shaded blue;

Hypnotised

I'm poised, if bade, to plunge

And prompted by the whitebait flash below,

I fall.

From sweet but loose embrace

I'm stolen by a clutching undertow.

Painfully

I'm punched by hidden rocks,

My body racked by each new random blow,

And

Dragged down to the murk

Where all the whiskered bottom-feeders go.

Helplessly

I wonder at my plight,

But knowing now that thirst must be the foe,

I drown.

Fermentation Power

But for a fungus, single-celled,

We wouldn’t have our West;

No ancient forests would be felled,

No fruit-pulp would be pressed,

No hillsides covered with the vine,

No chateaux in Bordeaux,

No cellars full of vintage wine,

No Beaujolais Nouveau;

No Roman Bacchanalia,

For Zeus no Ganymede,

For Northern protestants no beer,

For Beowulf no mead;

For celebrations no champagne,

No fizz to fill the glass;

No spirits made from grape or grain

To give drink gravitas.

What’s more, no texture in our bread,

No leaven for our flour,

No loaves to keep the people fed,

No fermentation power.

No reason to have settled down,

We’d live as nomads do,

No fenced-off farm, no cultured town,

Our pleasures far too few.

The plains would all be starved of meat,

Big game long gone by now;

We wouldn't find enough to eat

Because we’d have no plough.

With Vikings pillaging our shores,

We'd never fish the seas;

We’d scratch for food along the moors

And strip the nuts from trees.

But this sad life is not our fate!

We have our harvest feast;

A brimming cup, a heavy plate,

All thanks to humble yeast.

Genius Loci Mortuus Est

We flick side-glances at the new estate.

No neighbour will be facing neighbour here;

The streets are serpentine, not straight,

And houses slant askance as if in fear,

Appearing anorexically thin

With meagre gardens and mock-Georgian fronts;

Homes that look fit for hobbits to live in!

Is that the plan, to shrink us till we're runts?

Perhaps the first design was wide and fat

But the developers were squeezed for dough,

So builders used a giant butter pat,

Pinching proportions till they shouted, "Faux!"

Such elvish fancies carry on inside,

Where rooms are full of flimsy modern tricks:

Effects that fool the young and starry-eyed,

Imaginary wood and bogus bricks –

So, Moss, please come and clothe these stark new roofs,

O, Ivy, cling! And climb these virgin walls,

Let lichen get a grip in gleaming grooves,

And give these houses softer overalls,

For none of us can stand the sight of them,

Where once we had long views and open space;

Nor can we ever hold a requiem

To lay to rest the spirit of this place.

Seventh of March 2012

Six British uniforms in rags,

Six soldiers blown into a ditch,

A thousand bits in body bags

If they can sort out which is which,

Six mothers grieving, red in eye,

Six lovers weeping in distress;

A thousand Brits to wonder why

More families are fatherless.

Six youthful faces on our screens,

Six words: ‘They shall not die in vain’,

But thousands in a war machine

Will only add to those six slain.

Our forces fight where there’s no sea,

No green and pleasant pastureland,

Where what grows best is anarchy,

Where forests have been burned to sand.

But backing up the USA

Is how the British Lion roars,

That’s why, two continents away,

They’re packed off to defend our shores,

While traffickers from overseas

See ancient and abandoned forts,

Then run in migrants as they please

Through Britain's undefended ports.

We call that culture primitive;

Our culture sells them bombs and guns.

We do not show them how to live,

We show them how to kill our sons.

Who voted for this futile war?

Yet men are blown up in our name,

No glory here, just guts and gore,

Our politicians have no shame.

Loosh

What is this 'Light' the near-dead rave about

Which sucks them up into its shining sphere -

The atheists as well as the devout -

Kiss-blisses them, then spits them back down here?

In a hypnotic haze of love and awe,

The ravished claim this White Light is divine,

But how can all the rest of us be sure

Its ministrations are, in fact, benign?

We know it exercises mind control

And avidly observes each life review.

Perhaps it licks the loosh from human souls

As ants milk aphids of their honeydew.

'Above is as below', the mystics say:

Are we too proud to think that we're its prey?

Dead and Alive

I found a still-life that looked fit

To hang upon the wall;

It hung, I looked, but in a bit

I didn't even notice it:

I sold it on a stall.

Half-hidden hints of things to come

Are more than half the thrill;

From snowdrop to chrysanthemum,

From gooseberry to ripest plum,

My garden's never still.

I bought a bust of Hera's head

And placed it in the hall;

But every time I went to bed

That old immortal looked stone-dead:

No pulling power at all.

A plant that fades to reappear

Is sure to catch the eye;

From crocus to crocosmia,

From daffodil to dahlia,

My garden doesn't die.

Apocalypse

When Gaia's body first was bared

On mountain tops and misty shores,

She knew her beauty must be shared,

And hosted evolution's wars.

So she enravished arid lands

With lakes and rivers fed by rains,

Enticing life from sea to sands,

To forest glades and open plains,

But, ocean floor to high plateau,

She shuddered at her creatures' lust

And felt each predatory blow

From species boom to species bust.

We won the wars. We are her prize,

Yet do not praise her as our queen,

We do not see through Gaia's eyes;

Her ghost is lost in our machine,

So, GM crop or grim disease,

Our bubble must balloon and grow,

It strips all life from land and seas,

It sucks up oil and gas below,

And while it hungers, while it thirsts,

Her capital is ours to spend,

Until this bloated bubble bursts

Our wastes must be her dividend.

No goddess has the expertise

To undo damage this profound,

Deep-clean the air, unsully seas,

Reconsecrate the holy ground;

Our scum will darken the decay,

Encrust the moors and meadowlands,

A soup of poisoned DNA

Will sink beneath the desert sands,

No birds will sing in sacred groves,

No salmon animate the streams,

But ghosts will surely haunt the coves

When Earth's a world of dried-up dreams.

The Interview

Ninety-nine per cent of all the applicants have been dismissed,

Their sense of rejection intensified by the endless wait

For nothing at all, no letter, no call, no wave of a wrist,

Sifted out and ignored by men, not by happenstance or fate.

A short-listed six remain, competing for the one prize here,

This job. Superficially, they adopt confident stances,

But the neurones in their stomachs oblige them to taste their fear;

They all have dry mouths; at each sound, they exchange nervous glances.

One of the six must become ‘The One’. It’s a strange circumstance

To feel, as one of them does now, that it is more cruel to fall

At the last hurdle than never to have been given a chance.

Stranger still to think that his happiness should depend at all

On the disappointment of so many others. ‘First is First,

Second is Nowhere,’ Linford Christie said; and surely more so

When there are no silver medals. Are we, he asks himself, cursed

To build our lives through competition, or doomed never to grow?

He’s called before the panel. They ask, ‘Why do you want this post?’

He says: ‘Many physicists believe that choices we don’t make

Are made somewhere else, in parallel realities that ghost

Our own, even choices that seem odd and must be a mistake.

I’d like to keep myself where all decisions are for the best,

In a world where I succeed on merit and this company

Gets right to the top of the multiverse. That way we’re twice blessed.’

None of the panel smiles. They all regard him quizzically.

So he says: ‘We all see our best worlds in imagination,

All of us have an inner need to be authenticated,

We feel more real when we have other peoples’ recognition,

This must be true or why would we even be motivated

To try at all? Our egos get defined, we gain clarity

When we have worldly success, and that’s what gives us happiness.

In that universe, we possess a greater reality.’

‘So what happens,’ one interviewer asks, ‘if you lack success?’

‘If I fail, I become less sure of my purpose here on Earth,

I lose my focus or it gets foggier; I feel spaced out

Because fewer people are sanctioning my sense of self-worth.

I'm much less of a person because I’m more full of self-doubt.

And if I keep on failing, I become less and less stable,

I drop down the pecking order of the best ‘Me’ I could be,

I get relegated from the Premier Me league table.

Without proper validations from my world, gradually

I’d get phased out. In the end, I’d fall too far below my prime

To be of further interest to my ruling Oversoul.

I’d die. Others might think I died young, or well before my time,

But it’s better to be assimilated into The Whole

If my version here is leagues below my top identity.

Prolonging a redundant ego is just pointless and cruel,

Surely better that a universe stops dreaming about me,

Better to slip back into my transcendent self’s common pool.’

He stops, and in the silence, his heart beats loudly in his ears.

Every interviewer stares at him as if he’s slightly mad.

‘Is it not hard enough that you have to take on your own peers?

It’s solipsistic to second guess alternate selves; and sad,’

One of the panel says. ‘Failure gives you the experience

To adapt yourself to a complex universe. When you fail,

You grow wiser, hungrier and stronger. You gain resilience,

Unlike sons of celebrities or a son of Kim Jong-Il.

I’m a self-made man and this is the philosophy of choice:

That your soul will give your ego credit every time you try,

That overcoming setbacks will give you an authentic voice.

Be glad, therefore, that we’re not offering you this job. Goodbye.’

A Gothic fantasy or a metaphor for the human condition? You decide!

The Angel Trap

I dared to trap an angel in a cage

While she was travelling between two stars.

She didn't seem to hear my soothing words

And fluttered like a mad thing at the bars.

Reluctantly, I tried to clip her wings,

But love leaked out and clung to her like frost;

Her halo faded slowly, gold to grey

And all her luminosity was lost.

It was I who had given her this pain;

It was I who infected her with fear;

She’d been so full of joy but now became

Too sick at heart to even shed a tear.

I only wanted from her what I lacked:

A smidgen of her faith; her healing touch;

Her vision of a higher, better world;

Her immortality! I asked too much.

Next day, I found her somehow wandering free -

At first I thought it must have been her twin:

Her wings were whole, her halo shone anew,

As off she flew to join her angel kin.

But something else inhabited the cage,

No airy angel pining for the stars:

A demon with a hard, unholy stare

Had made himself at home behind the bars.

I caught the smirk of triumph on his face

And knew at once a bargain had been made:

He’d volunteered to take the angel’s place

And I had been indentured as his slave.

So now I tempt my demon every day

With foodstuffs, rich, and beverages, rare;

If I should fail, he swears he’ll steal my soul

And feed on it forever in his lair.

His appetites are rarely satisfied,

I have to bear his sulks and fits of rage;

Believe me when I say I rue the day

I dared to trap an angel in a cage!

Twilight of the Gods

The Greeks and Romans had some shameless gods,

Narcissistic, fickle, often at odds,

They almost dared us humans to transgress

And loved the whiff of sacrificial flesh...

Then from the Middle East a puritan

Came in to undermine their pagan fun;

Demanding undivided loyalty,

He said, “Forget all other gods but ME”.

The most Machiavellian of all,

He made an Eden, pre-ordained the Fall,

Tossed poor Adam out like so much dross,

And left a son to dangle on the cross.

Dispensing earthquake, famine, plague and flood,

He wanted more than just our mortal blood:

He threatened, in his bid to keep control,

Eternal hell for each immortal soul…

He too has had his day; now hardly fed

At all, he fades. His enemy instead

Is worshipped and devours our offerings,

The gross, rapacious god of worldly things,

A king whose buttocks overlap his throne,

Grown fatter than an aging Elvis clone

On bankers bonuses ripped from the Poor

And minerals mined half way to Earth’s core.

To simply hoard and feast; to feast and hoard,

This is the purpose of our present Lord;

He neither comprehends our discontent

Nor knows the meaning of the word, “Repent!”

In this god’s gut, the wastes accumulate,

The toxins mix, the slurries constipate,

Yea, though he gluts, he never feels replete,

Too busy gormandizing to excrete.

Now, treasures stored in Heaven don’t ferment,

But here they do, and one day must be spent:

See! The volcanic plug is growing weak,

The stench is here, the gases fart and leak;