Scandals

The dreaming spires

encourage desires,

brilliant women

ensnaring brilliantined men,

between the wars,

spies as whores

- childish language –

the infatuation un-reciprocated,

the coital cries quite calculated.

 

John, John,

trousers down or trousers on,

Gisela Klein

turned into Wine,

her secret garden

enough to pardon

any questions near the knuckle,

when bending near the undone buckle

on a hotel truckle-bed.

 

The war,

our finest hour

must intervene

and then the Elizabethan Queen.

Suez gives us a bloody nose

John, like the sun, also rose

 

And in the process of having it good,

Denis John is getting wood

with Christine, a certain sailor’s friend

and we know how these stories end.

 

"No impropriety!" None?

No secrets on the backbench,

communications by letters french:

John does the same as anyone.

 

The mud is flung and epithets swirl,

“a common tart" and “a prostitute”,

though neither are more than a foolish girl,

no-one mentions exploitation,

by the “great” and the “good”

of this island nation.

 

And does it really even matter

when leaders of nations are as mad as the hatter?

We sleep like dormice down in the gutter,

downtrodden fools, we scarcely mutter

against the misdeeds of our betters.

We do not struggle against our fetters.

 

Every so often there is a John,

to enable the grey ones to carry on,

a sacrificial, randy goat

who does not leave this suicide note:

 

“This is the bread

it is my body;

these are my crimes,

they are the circuses.”