A Somewhat Less Crappy Big Poem About Thatcher

Still Hate Her

or

Rot Around the Clock

I hardly have to say who, do I? Her!
I hate her when my watch is four lined noughts.
The witching hour's appropriate. I slur
Her name in anger 'til sleep takes my thoughts,

&, when 1 takes the place of four,
I slay her like a dragon in my dreams
(as though I were a knight in days of yore,
& she the serpent). Fire-mouthed, she creams

out the smoked entrails of her fellow men,
Draconian but anthropomorphic.
She raises it up to her lips again.
2am human cigarette. It's sick.

& when the clock strikes 3, she is still there.

'Forevermore! Forevermore!' she croaks,

the bloody smoke wreathing around her hair,
fag-ash falling, the arms & legs of blokes

too non-u for her falling to the floor.
Blood-waxed parquet. Eleven bloody years
of a glass-ceilinged room devoid of doors.
& her. & her. & her. & her. It's 4.

It's 5. Years into her term. In Brighton.
& she is very nearly exploded.
(I wish I'd done it. Doesn't everyone?)
Thirty long years. Thirty. & now she's dead.

But is she? She's the dragon in my dreams.
The semen in my cola. (True story.)
It's 6. I'm asleep. & they hear my screams
in Calais. All over a dead Tory.

7 o clock, & I wake up in a sweat,
her succubus-ghost heavy on my heart.
A smoke. A coffee. I try to forget.
I can't forget. I don't know where to start.

It's 8. It's hate. It's 8, I mean. I hate
they way I am meant to be all polite
about her, now she's dead - contaminate
political with personal - it's shite.

It's 9, &, after coffee, comes the wine,
& reading in bed (try Tom Hodgkinson).
This is a protest. This is my time. Mine.
(Not quite what The Nameless One would have done.)

Ben chimes 10. I worry my little head
with BBC Parliament. OMG!
Glenda Jackson speaking ill of the dead.
(A politician! Representing me!)

It's 11. & she is in Heaven.
(or Hell. Or ... Somewhere. Or ... Nowhere.)
Why couldn't I be haunted by Bevin?
But no. It's her. It's her. & she's still there...

...still here. High noon. Cucumber sandwiches.
The sun at its zenith. Me not at mine.
Haunted by The High Priestess of Bitches
& the promise of a new paradigm

that's never delivered. 1. I shiver
like she (you know) is dancing on my grave.
She is, of course - all this shit-storm weather?
It rained from her Reign of Terror - it paved

the way for Tory Might is Right today
2 divide & conquer. Rich, poor - Class War:
the right-wing-rich, having a field day,
set the waged poor against the unwaged poor.

& (3) me? I sit on the sidelines, watch
the War & pen my poetry in Peace,
& hope the bobbies on the beat just botch
half of their lawkeeping - it takes the piss.

4 o clock - for the clock keeps ticking by
& Heraclitus put it better than

I ever could: these things pass, we get by.
Time's our man. He can't do it? No-one can!

It's 5 o clock, &, yes, I'm still alive
(& still in bed, still reading) & she's not
risen from the dead yet - & this, the dive
wherein I lie & read's free of her rot,

except in (6) spirit; I mean The News
the bastards blast at us (& charge us for!)
Look out for resurrections of her views
(as though they weren't quite bad enough before!)

7. Sins. 7. Saints. 7. Scroungers.

Biblical language co-opted by Them
for Their own ends. (Which were her ends.) Loungers
in lizardskin, they are - two-faced ConDems.

Back to work! Back to work! We are the boss!

The public servants said. & were not sacked.

We took your freedom. Sorry for your loss. 

Thin end of the wedge? Your brain is hacked.

It's 9 o clock. It's The Nine O Clock News.
We're mourning her, are we? O. O, I see.
Propaganda. Divide. Conquer. Confuse.
Convince me that's it's really only me

who doesn't mourn her loss. & now it's 10.
Epic paranoia holds sovereign sway.

I fear to sleep to dream of her again.

(I really wish she would just go away.) 

11. I'm sorry to say I'm still
obsessing re a dead politician -
I wish I could divert my thoughts at will,
She's outlived her mortal abolition.