English Lions

His dull, suburban laugh smacks of festering in the ground

This relationship is like damp mould growing on the walls

It’s everything that’s wrong with British 30 somethings

It speaks to me of peeling wallpaper and old royalist sentiments

Sprouting out the cracks

And plates congealed in gravy

Burning resentments at the bottom of a glass of beer.

Her sparkle you see fade underneath the grouching growl

Of a lost empire and a sad young boy left to voyageless dreams

And fighting a world of drudgery

A fangless snake

Venom in the bowels of commuters in suits

Nowhere to tumble out but the mouth and the bottom of glasses.

We will be weakened or we will become warriors

The road is long, the fight is hard.

Even though you turned your back on the long upheld traditions

Of your fathers, even though you accept, with the wearied bow

Of our modern day liberals – you must look inside

And see the venom within, see what you carry

Before you poison all the wells of old Engerland.

Regard your reflection

In the dappled rugged rustic pools

Underneath your old leather boots

The tackett heal rusted and kept

Beside the door in the old broom cupboard

And the myth of an old Welsh dragon

Still lamented,

Jesus wept.