On the twenty third of June, anniversary of my father’s death,
The United Kingdom voted to LEAVE the European Union.
It was a close-run thing:
Fifty two percent to forty eight,
Though over a million votes between.

A result that will go down in the annals of history.
Another vote the pollsters and bookmakers got wrong.
I voted Leave, confidently expecting to Lose!!!
My friends were split in two
As Remainers became ReMOANers!

For I’m now branded a nationalist, bigoted racist
Who has made a massive mistake.
But I insist: Britain has Rejoined the World
And Our Commonwealth.

We are reborn
So sure there will be teething troubles.
We’ll have to learn to walk and talk again.

Cast off your gloom, Remainers!
Rejoice the brand new day.
Britain can be great again
As the dawn chorus resonates around the globe.
Opportunity smiles down on us.
It won’t be easy,
But when ever was it so???

The Phoenix rises,
Unfurling its golden wings…

Paul Butters

© PB 27\6\2016.

My married life
has a new ghost fix du jour—
a show called Haunted Collector
where John Zaffis pulls *****
historical do-dads out of haunted
domiciles, lines them up in bell jars
every harrowing episode.
His basement must be bursting
under the floorboards with EVP
chatter, ephemeral dead men
making residual trips down the hall
for midnight tuna-fish.

Last night we went down to Louisiana
in Deep South Paranormal
where a cast of drawling ghost hunters
cat-called the departed with backwater
truisms about cats and frissons.
Two bearded ZZ Top-types rattle
and shout through the Longleaf sawmill,
suffocated, chipped and abandoned.

But interestingly, our typecast yokels
take a new tactic beyond respect,
sympathy and confrontation. They play
their guitar for the undead, unleash
a melody, tempting the cryptic spirits
to step over the trimmers and chippers
and into the laser grids of square
lights, K2 meters, thermal camera frames,
the obelisk.

The peepings of ghosts have ceased
to ***** me. The proliferation
of paranormal pollsters
are crotchety and terrified,
modeling and grandstanding
the character American,
heirs of TV Kings and monsters,
castle builders, suffocating,
chipping away and abandoning
our very real screaming human
American creature.

Profligate pundits and
Philandering plutocrats
Promulgating pusillanimous
Pandering polecats
Put partially putrescent
Punks and pettifoggers
Past pitifully puny pollsters
Pushing the party politics
Of petrified pashas.

Disgusting demagogues
Dealing delayed death
Deeming democracy dying
Deny diplomacy daily
Deftly develop departments
Defending discrimination
Dividing deities from devils
Draining dedicated duties
With disgusting dictatorship.

Sorrowfully sublimated
Citizens of society slide
Swiftly and sequentially into
Sibilant session of silliness
In which similes scintillate
Signifying sensitivities
Of separate sensibilities
Subtly smiting the senseless.
Sauce for the stunningly stupid,
Champagne for the saboteurs.

by James Bruce

You’re the top!
You’re the top!
You’re a Millard Filmore,
You’re the top!
You’re the Girls of Gilmore,
You’re lucidity’s not Huckabee’s weird views,
You’re an immigrator,
A great debator,
You’re not Ted Cruz!
You’re the style,
Of a Ronald Reagan,
You’re the smile of a foxxy Megyn,
Were you Hillary, you’d be pilloried, and flop!
But if Donald, Ailes’s the bottom, you’re the top!

You’re the top!
You’re the Wall of China,
You’re the top!
You’re acute angina,
You’re hyperbole that’s a felony in Queens,
You’re Rand Paul’s mama,
Barack Obama,
You’re full of beans!
You’re the star,
Of the G.O.P. camp,
You’re a jam on a Christie bridge ramp,
I’m a crippling loan, a Roger Stone, a flop!
But if baby, Jeb’s sunk lower, you’re the top!

You’re the top!
You’re a well-coiffed dandy,
You’re the top!
Your hair’s cotton candy,
You’re assets vast that cast a glow of Trumpf
You’re a Carly visage,
The Greenwich Village,
You’re Friedrich Drumpf!
You’re demure,
You’re a friend of pollsters,
You’re the spur on some heels with holsters
I’m not fit to race, too commonplace, a sop!
But if Donald, I’m rock bottom, you’re the top!

his life
my life
is built upon time lapse
bordered by chip shops
and Kit Kats
topped off by the old chaps
who meet down the green.

I have seen the cynical
join with the maniacal
to plot diabolical acts,
time lapse.

And the pollsters who all
think like gangsters,

Gotti taking shots at the
politicians and cops
topped off by doughnuts,
cold cuts are the best though.

Now there were ruins and now there were mansions
all in the blink of the cameraman's eye
high rise and low cloud
don't think I am too proud to
take your advice.

It stutters on taped to feelings long gone
and the time lapse
and the Trilby's and flat caps
and the Kit Kats
and the chip shops and
it seldom stops anywhere
where I could make a
comment,
torment?
my punishment
reliving through creased folds
on clean linen bedsheets.

There are the gaps in the time lapse
when I seem not to exist
as if part of my life
has been missed out,
on purpose?

With time spent looking over our shoulders
As a matter of fact, afraid to turn our backs
Not so wise although much older
Compassion these days is something we lack

And could these shoulders get any colder
What's in it for me is the new group think
Make our next move according to pollsters
The despair out here is getting deep

Up one coast down the other
Sea to shining sea
Home of the afraid the way we are governed
Land of the not so free

With points to make we point out others' problems
Burn memories in effigy
Flic your Bic, smoke em if you got em
Look at yourself but don't look at me

We hide our faces as we hide the facts
They only seem to get in the way
We once were first, now we're dead last
Right out of the starting gate

Up one coast down the other
Sea to shining sea
Home of the afraid the way we are governed
Land of the not so free