Jubilee Bunting

by Alan Morrison

No more hoarding tissues, toilet paper, wipes,
Now the nation's bingeing on jubilee bunting,
Festoons of little triangles, red, blue, white,
Or streams of miniature Union Jacks hatching
Out on every street, like riotous blooms,
Or giant Jacks hanging as banners haranguing
From every angle, draped butcher's aprons
Bruised and bloodied hectoring from dowdy
Charity shop windows, and angry England flags
Still arguing with the wind, gammon-red crosses
On milk-white grounding—post-pandemic
In the midst of economic meltdown
All must stop to worship our Sovereign's
Longevity, for the umpteenth time, though this
Is the first time any English Monarch
Has reigned long enough to celebrate
Their Platinum Jubilee—and who more
Appropriate to be prime minister at this
Patriotic time than ebullient buffoon
Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, blond John Bullingdon,
Blimpish champion of imperial measurements,
Rambunctious stumbler booed as he stoops
Into St Paul's for the service in honour
Of the absent Queen, his distant cousin—
She'll never retire, and he'll never resign,
And we Plebs will never be granted a plebiscite
On whether to abolish the Monarchy
But we wobbly blancmanges would most probably
Vote to keep it anyway—so we Subjects,
The invertebrate, servile, deferential Public,
Celebrate that which politically castrates us,
And never God help us become a Republic
Because choicest historians always reminds us
What a damned embarrassment Cromwellians were
In all their un-English austereness and hatred
Of Christmas, those pudding-cropped Puritans,
That warty Protector and his contumely—
Better to stick to crown, throne and sceptre,
The ermined Devil we know, the Purple Line,
Keep stringing out the bunting, buns and tea
For obsessional processionals, silver, pearl, ruby,
Golden, diamond, platinum, blancmange and jelly,
For each ever more incomprehensible jubilee...