The Great British Prose Poetry Bin

 

I wish I was young and a fly half and free

and chosen to play for the British Lions at Rugby

because I would turn round and say

“I’m sorry, the Union is over, there is no team UK”

If I was picked for the Olympic Team and I won Gold

I would not climb the podium

As the Union Jack was lifted and God Save the Queen

I and my medal would be nowhere to be seen.

You can call me unpatriotic or just an awkward sod

But let me ask you “What makes you such a British bod?”

Is it the Class System or the number of food banks?

Is it your Red White and Blue underpants or your toy Crusader tanks?

What is it that makes you so proud of GB?

Was it that holiday in Tenby with the monks of Caldey?

Was it being brought up sexually repressed reading Bunty?

Look around you, what do you see?

Are you blind to the poverty and austerity?

The regional disparity?

Is it the differences in wealth that makes us so great?

Or the way we treat refugees with such hate?

You might be middle class and liberal and green

and not really care about flags of the unseen

but for some that ragged piece of cloth on a stick

is all that they’ve got. Gets on your wick?

The cross of St George with the name of your club

Hangs proudly at Wembley, the cauldron of soccer, the hub.

They don’t know what they’re singing about, God and the Queen?

It’s just the fact that they’re being heard and being seen.

It’s the arrogance of Empire, of superiority, of wealth

That gives the Union Jack its odour of stealth.

On a gunship off Jersey, the Lords have to remind the French

of Wellington, of Trafalgar and the gunpowder stench.

It’s a made up construct, it’s ownership, a tramp stamp.

The poor and homeless get crumbs off their fellow Brits table.

This Perfidious Albion is a land of lies, call it fable.