Poem: Yesterday’s Men

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

They were all yesterday’s men,
aubergine ties and copper suits,
hair parted just above one ear,
stomachs hallmarked round by
excessive and expensive beers.

They grew up with Status Quo,
drainpipe trousers, the Winter
of Discontent. They swore God,
it will never happen again and
Maggie saved privilege, pride.

To hell with the rest, they said,
accumulating. Punk was dead.
Switch on all the street lights!
They never thought, you see,
that the good times for some

would end. The world boiled.
The circumference of power
was like a snake, consuming
its own tail. Shudders wracked
the corpse of their philosophy.

Their battles fought, won, lost.
And what then? As banks fell,
vegetables grew. A sea change.
Several meters, in point of fact,
the North Pole naked and blue.

Yesterday’s men held on very tight
to their newspapers and networks,
trying hard to control the messages.
But, somehow, the dangerous ones
got through. Sustainability. Sharing.

Maggie, by then, was demented.
Ronald, long dead, turned grave.
The Russians were coming, the
Chinese made most everything,
a black President promised new.

But still yesterday’s men held on,
gathering round the cluster bombs.
Let’s make our ending memorable,
they said. Better the young men die
for oil than we fade away in our beds.

categories: creative