Four poems that reach out to encompass diverse dimensions, beginning with Whittling our Niche (perhaps my own favourite, and the poem which heads the WoN website). This poem explores the notion that during his or her short life any person sees a miniscule portion of the universe which surrounds. Our friends and experiences come from that tiny splinter taken from a massive tree. But what if we could connect to the greater trunk and all its branches?
Whittling our niche
Imagine what one doesn’t see,
Or hear, or feel, or experience,
Through any one life
On this blue-green globe.
The choice we have is limitless;
The path we choose to take,
Governed by a potent mix
Of genes and circumstantial fate.
Reality comes individually:
A short, sweet glimpse, a minute amount,
From oceans of people
And deserts of place.
Within some overall time-set frame
We carve and whittle our niche,
Discarding the remaining sequoia tree
For the other six billion to reach
England, March – 2003
Whittling our Niche alludes to the fact that through our lives we choose from a tiny number of people and places. We associate and assimilate within a small circle. At birth our brand-new world is a clean slate on which we can draw the life we wish to lead, and people we prefer to meet. Though not really; even at the point of entry to the world we are the child of a mother and father, who inhabit a specific culture. Already we’re confined and codified; pushed into our corner. Interplays with people in our vicinity form the basis on which we select relationships for life. If we had chosen another route, then the result could have been quite different.
Ode to Tone (below). At the time of writing I was sick and tired of Tony Blair, or Teflon Tone, as he came to be known (‘No shit sticks to this man!’). For me, his false smile was hollow cover for bloodbath which he was responsible for. I felt his unbridled support for George W. Bush and total agreement for the invasion of Iraq – and the subsequent war – negated much of the good works he and his government accomplished, during their time in office.
Spoken in two voices – a rather languid serious verse alternating with a more rollicking, vicious chorus – the poem tells the story of Blair and David Cameron (his eventual successor) as if it were a stage play … albeit a Shakespearian tragedy!
Prime Minister Blair turned out to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. To my mind, he, more than anyone else, was responsible for launching an illegal war, based on flimsy evidence of Saddam’s weaponry and an engineered vote in the House of Commons. Without Blair’s backing I believed Bush would not have had the strength and determination to go to war. Other alternatives could have been sought to control Saddam Hussein and his despotic regime, within the United Nations charter. In the end, tens of thousands died and many more were injured because of Blair’s singlemindedness. One could speculate that if Gordon Brown had been the leader, the Iraq war might not have happened (and what a difference that would have made to history).
In contrast, David Cameron – at the time of writing, the Tory leader and new pretender to the throne – came across as fresh and innocent (and presumably not responsible for killing anyone). It was to be hoped that he would take a more responsible attitude and respect the British heritage of involvement in conflicts (or abstinence) based on merit.
My fury directed at Blair, mirrored the thinking of millions of others at the time. Yet the Teflon man stuck to his guns, backing George Bush, the son, to follow his father’s footsteps into the Middle East, against the wishes of the United Nations, this second time round with much more disastrous consequences.
FOOTNOTE: With hindsight I can see that my usual antagonism towards policies emanating from elite factions on the right was clouded by this one issue of Iraq. David Cameron turned out to be a weak leader, also a wolf in sheep’s clothing, who ended up plunging a hapless Britain into Brexit. Nevertheless, whenever that toothy grin of Mr Non-Stick appears on TV, I know that my thinking was right, to reject his evil deeds, committed on behalf of myself and the other 60 million Britons.
This plastic man called Blair,
Looking old in his gold rimmed specs,
Now faces a younger foe
Across the Commons floor.
It’s been ‘Tony this’ and ‘Tony that’
For what seems like eternity.
Shored up by his New Proletariat:
The essence of slick modernity.
This non-stick man called Blair,
Slithering over each bump in his path
With a slick and bloated ego:
Enough to take us to war!
But now David’s here and David’s young.
Can he turn the tables on the Teflon man?
And make mud stick to the side of his pan,
So he buries his nose in Gordon’s can.
This obnoxious man called Blair
Is fuelled by the stink of power:
Cross-lantic currents, to and fro,
And prayers behind George’s door.
So Punch and Judy and kick him down,
Rip off his tight trousers and knock off his crown,
He deserves to be kicked to the edge of town.
Push him over the cliff and watch the man drown.
This war-mongering man called Blair
Has death on his own bloody hands:
Innocent lives that just had to go
To please their English Tzar.
Thus bring on David and crown him king;
There’s no way that he could be worse than him.
For as far as I know, there’s no blood on his skin
While our Tone has ten thousand on his!
Cheltenham, 2005
