2.10.07

In Blackpool

THE TORY CONFERENCE
‘to which I pay tribute’

Blackpool Winter Gardens.
Blackwater. Honeyed porridge;
heroworship; that is of strangers
or characters in plasma. I am burnt
coffee only makes me happy.
It’s the air of smug entitlement:
no, I couldn’t consider voting Tory.
Who has the best focusgroup or polling data
wins; if every party is populist
there is room for difference
only in errors of interpretation; knowing what is wanted.
||||||In statistics.
We want parties who do not pander to us
and between whom we can tell.
Stop clapping in the crowd people
ruining his flow. A government that actually believes in Britain
is a government I believe in.
The cameramen insist,
like Wimbledon’s, on showing us the pretty women
in the audience, except being Tory they aren’t pretty.
And underneath a phrase repeated,
scrolled, what English can do — beautiful —
Blackpool Winter Gardens.

How could one describe her?
Poetry deficient — no, it’s up to it.
Naval prowess; island nation
never insular; restless. What Britain stands for
The people of Burma
The torment of Darfur
The tragic people of Zimbabwe
(shit: sanctions against torment).
Clapping insecurely.
||||||||||||||||||||||||My dog bounces on the lawn.
A peachy dome gets sheen in hangar light.
This man for his accent he’s the only I’d elect.
The opposition are always bolder,
flaunting clarity impossible in power.
In power they will disappoint.
We should remember
not to hope so much of scholars we anoint
governers, that they are actors
courting favour. Career jesters.

Mr Brown if you were committed
to Iraq at the start why are you now withdrawing?

You think of the Tories as callous.
That is mistaken —
poetry as well as a meal,
the people were fantastic
helping Rwanda, they’re still middle-class.

(Newsreaders now are all hot
I know therefore I am not supposed to listen.)

Britney, she lost the kids. Story
rackin the beltway. Rocking.
Still she is a kid, veeing photographers.
Now she is famous just for being
||||||a trainwreck.

Thanks to the BBC we get
||||||haunted, harrowed
reactionshots. A suited man
narrates a torture out of Nashe:
roasting over fire; stabbing; saltwater tub.
||||||More reaction.
A woman’s tears. BURMA UNREST.
The impotence of the United Nations.
||||||And Zoya Phan
like a prodigious child, moving,
held up shackles
guards used to sear through skin and fat and muscle,
by electrification, to bone.
Such places are funhouses
for thugs, prison states
with prisoners in power — innocence
their unearthly drink and food.
||||||BURMA UNREST.
The impotence of the United Nations
||||||is underlined.
If you wanted it this is my reaction.

||||||I am Cogan,
||||||Hull. From Blackpool,
||||||or the livingroom sofa,
||||||with inertia.

No comments:

Post a Comment