Swaddle me in paperwork
To cover up the cracks
Evaluate my worthiness
To calculate my tax
Privatise the atmosphere
And charge me by the breath
Bind me into servitude
Employ me half to death
See I'm put to pasture
When I'm unfit for the herd
Then reduce me to a metaphor
And sell me by the word

**

Yes, I am an island
Though not of rock and stone
I contemplate in solitude
Anticipating every mood
The distant sound of ships at sea
Are lulled into a melody
It’s not that I’m avoiding you
I like to be alone

Yes, I am an island
I battled for and won
The muted roar of rolling thunder
Hardly moves the breeze asunder
Sharks in ties with silver tongues
Berate the shore and dream of lungs
There’s not a cloud in sight
For I’m an island in the sun

Young Karl Marx
Prowled the commons and the parks
In the darkness he would ****** with the lasses
Using tenderness and stealth
In his bid to share the wealth
With the working and the lower middle classes

Strolling about with the air of a breeze
She weaves through the leaves and the boughs of the trees
While sunlight is dwindling, shadows advance
But she casts them behind her and leaves them to chance
Nought but a speck with a filament crown
Jessica Thistleton, born of the down

Scratching through the pictures
Of a life he left for dead
Venomous the rhetoric
That runs around his head
Doomed to live in circles
Oh, his aching spine
Bitter Glynn Capacity
Limps the line

Complexion of a heart attack
The waistline of a barge
The bottle always empty
And the portion extra large
Panting on the staircase
Leaning on the rail
Wheezing Glynn Capacity
Looks quite pale

Rattling the cutlery
Quivering the hands
Addled by his impotence
No one understands
Deathly are the beads of sweat
Converging on his brow
Broken Glynn Capacity
Not long now

The news will say we're suffering from excess immigration
That a rampant hoard of foreigners has fallen on our nation
But truthfully, there hasn't been a native Briton here
Since people dressed in mammoth skin and hunted with a spear

Our language is a mixture of a dozen different tongues
We munch our way through poppadoms, fajitas and fu-yungs
When cheering at a football match, we're infamously vocal
Our teams may be the finest but the players won’t be local

Genetically, a Briton is a multi-cultured stew
With Romans, Saxons, Vikings and the Celts, to name a few
Our national drink is Indian, the Germans make our beer
The TV comes from China and the table from IKEA

Potatoes from America and onions grown in Spain
A multitude of British things arrive by boat and plane
The rain that falls upon our hills has blown from over seas
And with it come migrating birds to nest in British trees

The Royal Windsor family have Greek and German genes
So think about just what it is that being British means
We're stronger with our differences, the best of humankind
Our nation, not an island but a common state of mind

Why would I consider it
When never were you true
I never should reload it
And relinquish it to you
For surely would you use it
And still would I show surprise
At the sight of bridled malice
In such grey and lifeless eyes

The tools you used against me
Left scars across my mind
The will you took away from me
I happily resigned
A blame it hovers over you
But doesn't match your dress
If more I pile onto you
It seems I carry less

You placed such trust about me
And it grew too hot to hold
I dropped the warmth in front of me
And cursed about the cold
A shiver ran about me
Like a spider on my skin
My vision faded eerily
The room began to spin

Insanity beheld me
In my broken tepid form
It wrapped its arms around me
So comforting and warm
And showed me secret windows
Which no living eye should bite
With a light of truth above its head
It charged into the night