By Philippa Greasley
No vote, no questions asked, no choice
now we must
sing the Lord’s Prayer at the start
and chant the National Anthem at the end
“well, why should we have to ask whether or not British citizens want to sing the National Anthem, what a ridiculous thing to have to do”
he said, like a common earthball mushroom, sputtering out dark smoke-spores
of unchallenged hereditary privilege
and the divine right of monarchs to rule
scraping and gold-hoarding with imperial fingernails
an uneasy inheritance, this
a lineage of bruised walls and cordyceps-crept halls
not sure how loud you should sing for god and the king
of a country that
has a third of its children living in poverty
and has crashed down the Rainbow Map rankings faster
than they can throw a trans kid under the bus
and which keeps the old, old wound gaped open
the decaying bedsore of
one percent of the UK’s households
having more wealth
than 80% of the rest of us
but, sure,
sing and pray
and if you don’t
Reform-sponsored phone screens
and Meta AI glasses watching you get
shamed on social media
those, our councillors
turned into burnable objects
not British citizens any more
Maybe we can all agree on
handing over the National Anthem to Freddie and Bowie
and pray tomorrow gets us higher, higher, high
because today is a hymn sung to a rot-stained common stinkhorn mushroom
dragging in the flies.
