Flicking from general election to martial law – not much more than changing a light bulb.
Sold to the United States a century ago, when Spain needed the cash.
Americanised, yet every inch the Far East.
A long line of disaffections: each generation must have its own (communist, nationalist, Islamist).
The militant group now showing allegiance to IS started out as a ‘family militia’.
Who told Islamists to look like icons of Jesus – or even take his name?
The President’s in shirtsleeves, doing the business: unusual business where there’s no counting the cost; his USP is order at any price.
Waves of civilisation crashing over these islands: Hindu-Buddhist, Islamic, Catholic. Talking about women, the head of state still speaks barbarian.
Successive breakaways and the different headgear of their respective leaders; from the outset on the lookout for the best deal with central government.
Always ready to rain – except when already raining?
Lining up to get away, thousands waiting patiently between the fire fight and the Army road block.
Normal life….to be resumed….further disruption included.

All the gold a couple could wish for
Wrapped in a handy-sized bundle, gratefully received
This summer’s day: 4 August 2016
See how it was: his mother’s pale face suffused with joy
Father (proud father) cradling the reason for completing his daily round:
Te Deum – O God, We Praise You. Not needing to get high
To get through the tedium of it, as posties have been known to do.

Odour of ordinary infused with news of his rare condition
Each moment now incensed with unusual significance
The known unknowns – how much does he see in us, how long have we got?
Holding his parents as tightly as they hold him.

They wound trees to obtain the bittersweet resin known as myrrh,
As the parents of 10-month-old Charlie Gard have been wounded
By successive court judgements going against them.
Myrrh that’s made for healing and also for embalming –
How poignant the discrepancy now all their appeals have failed.

So tender is every sight of him, each instant
Looking back to the future that might have been
Each instance looking forward to no future at all
In quickening preview of a sickening end of time.

2.

Poking out from a distraught dad’s top pocket
His boy’s cuddly monkey toy, tight-lipped grin in permanent upswing.
That monkey-face is polar (bear) opposite to the father’s fixed-down mouth-frown.

Boy can’t cuddle toy ’cos he just can’t move
A calm exterior may mask pain he feels but lacks the capacity to show
Such is the brain damage he’s suffered, we’ll never rightly know.

So here comes the judge; baroness, no less.
Mind sharp as a scalpel, she’s cutting in to the contradiction:
Medical advice versus parental instinct to prolong life at all costs.

Operation over, the hearing comes to an end.
The boy is to die – ‘dignified’; the parents may never recover.
But when the state intervenes for the sake of the child,
Humanity recuperates from natural calamity –
Or so it is claimed. read more

‘You come here when people die, why?’ ‘Even then, they’re not really here’.

Grenfell somewheres are confronting a troupe of professional anywheres
Of these, the son of the manse maintains such decorum as he can muster
Naïve in the matter of socks and ties, but not daft enough to expect ‘more tea, vicar?’

Wiser still – or cynical, the locals have seen our sort before:
Reporting that doesn’t come, then drops in, drives by
Shoots and chews up its reportees, leaves them for brushing aside.

Alongside ‘deportees’ and ‘detainees’,
How many have we fetched and fixed in stories that we nailed?
So let no one be surprised, if reporters are arraigned with officials to be jailed
When they tell us we’re not wanted: no dogs, no ministers, no journalists.

Dust and ashes in a vertical no man’s land
Block-jacked upwards in contempt for ‘streets in the sky’

No more the chequered lights of a Broadway Boogie Woogie
Silver slivers in the early hours made way for the grey of the First World War
Meantime the furious orange that gives its name to burnt

First the flames engulf the tower, then the tower is all-consuming
‘Grenfell changes everything,’ says the fresh-faced council leader.
Wheeling his way to a blow-up bed in the sports hall nearby
The boy with cerebral palsy reports the council is speaking air

Across the city scant resources scattered in panicked disarray
Tenants decanted, doormats banned, perspective binned for the day

Grenfell comes loping greedily, echoes of Beowulf, towering above
But Grenfell has no mind nor movement, unless we make it so
We may choose the allegorical, if that’s how best to recount
(And of the dead and injured, not only the amount)
But we must have clear-headed and categorical
When that’s what it takes to remake.

Hunched with hands forward for the handcuffs,
There’s a moment when, from a certain angle,
Richard Burton comes to mind: dark hair, bright eyes, brooding.

But this one’s not even Welsh
Only that his on-off missus cooks in a Cardiff caff.
No claim on the Celtic flame, then; simply a standard-bearer for failure.

Missed the Muslim march he’d muttered about mowing down –
(You mightn’t know but it’s happened more than once on Merseyside,
Years ago, when Orange was the sash some fathers wore)
Making do with worshippers milling round after midnight

And when you spilled them, had they reached their state of grace –
That sense of being other than their everyday?
Did you see it in their faces, Jealous Guy? Unlucky Man,
If just a taste of this had come to you some other way…..

My guess is yours didn’t come at all
You never arrived, even after all that panting down the motorway
In the van you may have hired for somewhere to kip; alone again, naturally.

‘Did my bit’ – come off it. And ‘kill me’ just cracks me up.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Martyr Manqué – this time as farce.
Call this a terrorist? Dial ‘F’ for Failure
And you’ll have the full measure of White Van Darren, the man-less-than.

Knives drawn and mad keen to cut it out,
They came looking for the heart of Saturday night.
Hands held in the gloaming,
That small-town movie where we are the small-time stars – slashed.
Smashing the dash of melancholy,
When the moment’s liquid in the mirror behind the bar.
This was a one-way mission: gun the motor; kill the self-loving, self-loathing self-doubt.

How many had to die, you numbskulls, to affirm your existence for the eight minutes before death by cop?

Drive-in, stroll-on Saturdays may never be the same
We can only make them better.
Don’t say we owe it to the dead,
Or we’ll have let our freedom become burdensome
Do it for ourselves,
For who we are without the daily grind to make us dumb
Our mission is this: fix what’s under the hood, discover what we’re like unfettered

And if sometimes an unknown voice which has to be the ghost of that Saturday night….
It’s OK – she’s on our side.

‘Amputate his hand without anaesthetic’
Baying for the blood of this God-like medic
‘Rogue’ surgeon’s powers of knife and death….
If his head were severed, no intake of breath

Kathy Griffin turns the plastic head around,
So the lens won’t catch the white patch not covered in fake blood.
Hers is a comic performance for the camera, drawing on the tragedy
Wrought by ISIS executioners, also performing for the camera-eye.

Down the decades, was Ian Paterson method-acting as the galloping doctor?
As gourmand of the chest area, slicing & dicing where Trump only copped a feel.

Here a breast to be removed – unnecessarily, as it turns out. To another patient,
We can save your cleavage if we operate only here – insufficiently, as it turns out.
(God save us from men playing God, except when we need them to be infallible.)

Meanwhile a Muslim surgeon treating victims of the Manchester bombing, cannot comprehend the make-up of Salman Abedi:

‘I don’t understand how someone who professes the same faith could have such a discordant view of life.’

But how many of us are truly harmonious? Paterson points to discord even in a surgeon’s performance, ending in terrible strife.