This Septic Isle

Time for another Guest post. This time a new Guest Collaboration, a collaboration between two colleagues who have experience of working in the public sector. The collaboration arose from workshops with a Writer in Residence with whom they worked last year. The writers appear as The Renegade Poets – feedback welcome:

The Minister for Re-invention stepped up to the mic.
“We need” he intoned solemnly, “to reinvent The Wheel”
“Less Spin and more Motion is required if we are to Get Ahead!”
“Get a heart, not a head” heckled Opposition Snipers
texting sleazy ammunition to Fleet Street provocateurs.
Perched upon his Brompton later, cycling home to Pimlico
Thinking back upon the day, he pondered on a tendency the Masses had to
Overthrow the Vision, the Enlightened Plan of a dapper Old Etonian.
Storm clouds gather. Outside his pied-a-terre, red embers of embitterment glow.
In the backyards of Blackburn, the semis of Slough, the Towering Hamlets,
a rumble of discontent, a Ballad of Resistance crackles through the air.
Unyielding, our Patrician hero sips Chablis, resolute, with steely faith
in Middle England, Common Sense, the restorative power of bitter medicine.

Flames of resentment lick upward, fiery bright;
rebellion simmers, the pot of protest boils.
Strains of the Song of Sorrow swell whilst unseen
figures dart, shadows dark in moon and half-light.
The Minister relaxes – a Parliamentary recess–
listening to Puccini; while Mimi cries around high ceilings,
constituents deal with double-dip recession.
Where he feels entitlement, the comrades find the fuel of excess.
At a meeting of the Bullingdon Club, some miles distant,
bow ties are loosed and black DJs removed.
Port passes to the left, opinions to the right.
Along the Thames Embankment, streetlights gutter and go out.
Downstream a neon sign pulses into life, casting
prisms of electric cobalt into fetid pavement pools
of urban dew – tincture of piss, essence of gob,
swirls of shimmering gristle-grease from heel-ground McAvian bones.
Sapphire mirrors capture for a moment the stumbling cast
of nightwalkers, breaking waves against the soles of souls lost to
reverie, delinquency, survival. Wild eyed and reckless,
they navigate the urban badlands, seeking solace
or redemption in its dens and subterrane.
Unnoticed by these players in Vaudevillian disarray,
a young girl dressed in high-street threads steps out into
the night. Vertiginous white stilettos clicking on grey slabs;
hair cascading, clouded in cheap parfum, lips parted,
knowing, complicit in her own avenging scene.

The paparazzi wait. Flashes primed, cameras held steady
to witness the unfolding plot. A tip off text;
a hungry press. They take their galleried seats.
Our theatre has its audience now.
A world platform upon which to strip away the trappings
of success, the lies and moral platitudes dished up daily,
designs of duplicity, decadence, deceit, the
doubtful standards of the high-brow.
Our male lead too, struts his path, even with the cloisters
of Westminster so near, all eager anticipation for
the night, its dark joys to come.
A wife expensively, fragrantly dispatched, his pockets
stuffed with hard cash, the noble forehead betrays
the slightest sheen of fear.
One remaining lamp, a single spotlight, illuminates the stage.
Two players enter, Left and Right. A kiss. A fumble.
Bundled brown envelopes change hands.
Magnesium white lights arc, capturing the earning of a living wage.
From safe distance beyond the stalls, she toasts her success,
lights a cigarette; silently from madding scenes she slips,
anonymously, away. Richer for her part
in this age-old game of arrogance brought low,
she leaves him by the Thames, dazed, uncomprehending.

Such furtive indiscretion barely stirred
the languid pool of Imperial government.
In his grandfather, the (12th) Baronet’s time, only divorce…or buggery…
might scupper a chap’s shot at the Highest
Office in the Land. Long vanished sepia certainties,
as faded now as his Ministerial dreams of
Cabinet supremacy, Balmoral picnics.
A headline, a Twitter trend, a phone call from No.10. His resignation letter
on heavy clotted-cream paper is briskly accepted.
The Rt Dishonourable must now Reinvent himself. A novel?
A redemptive lecture tour? Perhaps.
His Vision may yet be the Manifesto of the Age.
Musing his fate, another call comes through…
The elfin production assistant for Celebrity Big Brother
coos down the line.