RECKONING

A time of reckoning is come
Minneapolis is burning
Brooklyn is ablaze
Los Angeles is on fire
Death is Detroit
None of us can breathe
Amid the acrid stench of smoke from smoldering tyres
Governors call in the national guard
Military police face off with protesters outside the Oval Office
The nation is convulsed with rage and fury
As it slumps into a second Great Depression
When the looting starts, the shooting starts
My eyes are still sore from the pepper spray
JJ got a nasty gash from a guardsman with a mean truncheon
He was stitched up by Jasmine
With no health insurance to pay for his hospital treatment
Saw a CNN cameraman hit by a rubber bullet
During the wee small hours
Trump's hollow tweets echo around cyberspace
Fomenting violence against black protesters
Even as the dying embers of his presidency crumble to ash
Among Twitter fact checks
His sycophants scatter like naughty schoolboys
George Floyd RIP
#BLM

A time of reckoning is come
A plague has visited these valleys
A wave of disease washing over our former pit towns
Poisoned by the Brexit well
Is this what taking back control looks like?
Thatcher's children become Johnson's parents and grandparents
Our narrow lives circumscribed by the arbitrary cruelty of Universal Credit
Blighted by social services on the cheap
Presided over by a gang of gutless stooges
It was mayhem again at the food bank today
Barely enough essentials to go round
The wife's had no new PPE for weeks now
She says it'll be a miracle if she doesn't catch it
Stay alert, they tell her, protect the NHS

A time of reckoning is come
The hourglass lies on its side
Time suspended
The aeroplane fleets are grounded
Resting on the melting tarmac like lazy seagulls
The cruise ships are unwelcome in any port
Plague ships, we call them
The rain forests burn
Smudging the deep blue autumn skies indigo
Our indigenous peoples are buried in mass graves
Our favelas are cesspits of disease and suffering
A madman has seized the reins of government
Oh Lord, why have you forsaken us?