(Russell) Branded

Dispatches, Channel 4, 16/9/23; commons image above by Brian Solis

It always happens, it seems; fame’s warped privilege
Breeds perversion, as years on, Russell Brand’s women
With the much-used stamp of abuse; as sex replaced heroin,
Said to flow as it does or did through his system,
Each compulsion subverting his victims’ lives;
Time’s conversion and creating new moments
In which the female finger points to accuse.

Brand came to fame (and on it, too) through sensation,
By masturbating fat builders, or pissing his pants on the street.
All on his first TV show, busting taboos like burst blisters,
And naturally passing pus to us, by sucking the dark
Like boiled sweets. Later, with his hairsprayed halo of hair
And Dickensian style demeanour, he fopped and preened
Like a peacock while emitting a sexually lurid squall,

By describing the ‘knobstacle course’ each woman he won
Had completed in order to gain and gratify his attention,
As if this self-styled Pope of the penis required the kissing
Of ring, cock and ball to feel accepted, or ‘grailed’ as his was
The prize to please women. They were, like addiction the thing
To work through to reclaim - some form of acceptable stance
In the world, as with his recent adaptation of wellness,

His Rock God chic now transplanted by a guru’s robe:
Healing games - to justify or atone for the sins he’s supplanting,
Or some misinformed fool’s failed evolution as a cauterising
Cock stokes faith’s flame. Brand sees himself now as brave,
But has perhaps always done so. In daring conventions,
He possibly sought to expose all of society’s ills,
As his current conspiratorial kick charts conviction;

Forced into online denials he offers his rejection of screen
And stage now as rose and also proof of his new dreams
Of direction, in which he grooms if not girls, then opinions.
Rebranding himself in clear colours as he childishly
Crayons truth. And he may of course in this way,
Hope to chase and chart some forgiveness.
For what we can never admit is deep rooted,

And even talking about the soul is no search.
For his new drug is truth but what of the new heroines
He is taking towards their revelations, as a growing collection
Of women who in speaking out now spill the hurt
Held at his hands, as allegedly when he was thirty,
A sixteen-year-old girl sucked his penis, granting
One of ‘them blowjobs which make mascara run’,

His past joke. Along with the great gagging noise
With which those who watch porn are familiar,
With sex as a parody of forced passion, his erudition,
Part of his pose and poise is a spoke breaking away
From the wheel as his bike of self-belief begins rolling
Out of control as fate willing, another celebrity snag
Snares a life. Did his former heroin habits help

To subdue the flesh-fed fire inside him? And is or was
This imbalance the method by which Russell will smear
Child and wife? Watching Channel Four’s Dispatches
Last night, it was clear that another pale God
Has been toppled; these present-day icons lack
The imprimatur of the past, as Russell now rolls
Not just away from all screens but under the same rock

As Rolf Harris, or, Stuart Hall, Gary Glitter, and you-know-who:
He recast as the modern monster who stalks the broadcast bay
Truth’s waves smother. For Brand at best with that hairdo
And affected talk cartoons well, alongside Savile’s shtick.
Brand had no cigar, just his penis, but this has been said
To burn; tease as torture and upon the fair flesh
Of young women; false myth as fake magic.

Or the blood clots begat by sick spells.
There is something clearly wrong with the men
Who rage this form of war on all women.
Something as deficient as the need to escape
Each bright morning through the former
Golden brown’s mired dye. Or through the obliterations
Of booze, or mindless sex, or by gambling.

Something within us which leads to the out of body state,
Or glazed eye. Is it lust as possession? Perhaps.
But not all who feel lust create victims. Privilege then,
Sensed or granted, or wilfully chased defines why;
And why we subjugate all that’s soft, ruining it with hate’s
Hardness; or feel the need to prove ourselves better
And in some warped way justify, our particular place

At the top. But as the old saying states, the only way
To go is down when you get there. Beware of what’s coming.
And why it needs to come. Can love die? You just have
To feel it to know. And this is the case that boys like Brand
Need to answer. If you have abused women the only thing
Spilling from you should be the sour stuff stirred by sorrow.
Look, lad; souls strip you. It seems that Narcissus’ pool
                                                                            has run dry.