Tuesday, November 26, 2019

The Election Promise: A Poem from From Kevin Higgins

Tuesday, 26 November 2019 16:14
The election: Promise
Promise
by Kevin Higgins

For all the comedians who used to be edgy during the 1990s, commenting on the British general election.


If you piss on the frail
red-petalled flower
just now nudging its way back up
from presumed extinction,
with your cynicism and your sneers;

the day of your funeral
I’ll pay a team of loudspeakers,
town criers, and dogs to howl
at the few mourners about
how useless you were
when it really mattered,
until it’s the one trait of yours
anyone remembers;

then call the Union of Worms, Death Beetles,
and Incinerator Operators out
on an official strike that will apply
only to you, so your sour carcass can sit
forever lodged in the world’s gut
as a warning to future others.

Kevin Higgins writes:
Promise was provoked by too many hours of listening to the pseudo-satire of comedians who used to be 'edgy' during the 1990s and who now sit comfortably on BBC comedy panel shows. So comfortably that their rear-ends have merged with the seat, and in some cases both they, and their rear ends, have in effect become as much part of the establishment as the Archbishop of Canterbury, and his rear-end.

Kevin Higgins is a Galway-based poet, essayist and reviewer, and satirist-in-residence at the alternative literature site The Bogman's Cannon, www.bogmanscannon.com.

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