The clear, sweet evil of that simple name,
so redolent of sweaty viciousness,
of Spite is Right, of sin divorced from blame,
of seedy placemen, bloated with success,
did not fit with his flinty newsreel face.
This quarry, tracked down by a newer gang,
the old, tired formula once more in place,
would get a just, fair trial - and then he'd hang.
They showed him film of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
On all the panels of his glassy dock
the thin ghosts grinned, like Death's Heads, come to mock.
Who can feel pity for six million shades?
Yet one lone man (a worthless one, allowed)
hemmed in by death, still harrows and degrades.
Categories:
placemen, history,
Form: Sonnet
Mubarak is a case in point. You leave
a man on top too long, he loses track
of what he is, beginning to believe
he's Pericles. Thus white shades into black.
Magruder, Coulson, Mitchell, Liddy, Dean -
they all lined up to help him tell the lies.
The end can never justify the means.
Who put the blinkers on such piercing eyes?
Up to this point, the office stood for Good,
all that could be hopeful in mankind.
But Nixon grinned, as only Nixon could -
a thousand placemen wilfully went blind.
The strangest thing about these law-destroyers,
these wreckers of the State? They were all lawyers.
Categories:
placemen, political,
Form: Sonnet