Some Other Beneficiaries    

    (After Les Murray's “The Beneficiaries”)
Hogamism higamism

The Liberal Party

does not praise Racism.

Most ungenerous. Most odd,

when they know it's what finally

won them their thirteen-year war

against Paul, against Bob.
Portrait of Doomed Youths 

    (After Wilfred Owen's “Anthem for Doomed Youth”)
What happiness for these who live as chattels?

Only her monstrous personalised ringtone,

Only his triumph in playstation battles

can make them feel they are not owned, but own.

No poetry for them; words disempower.

No New Idea, save the magazine

a shrill, demented magnate in a tower

excretes to supplement the TV screen.
What mourning for them, if and when we mourn?

Not by the poets, but by prose-police

shall their history be assembled piece by piece.

The golden arches under which they're born

shall provide the childhood friend that each child finds;

and every day this dumbing down of minds.
Anachronistic Torso of Amanda

    (After Rilke's “Archaic Torso of Apollo”)
Children hear the legend of the missing head

and fear hemorrhages in their eyes. For this torso

is ablaze with fluorescent lights inside

like a nightmare; and suddenly they know
why they will be locked in here. Otherwise

each granite breast could not chill them so, nor could

a rictus run through adamantine hips and thighs

to a procreative centre merely carved.
Otherwise by now this stone would be defaced

by democratic seagulls and graffiti,

and so would not destroy a child's last hope:
Would not from all the borders of the country

announce who we are: that this is not a place

where they are wanted. You must change your vote.