(13) Mike

Mike steps up to the mike,

pumped up, excited,

at the meeting of the local chapter of the BNP,

hands trembling, brandishing a high-velocity rifle.

“Your right and mine!” he barks,

waving the weapon like a flag

before their starry eyes

to rapturous applause.

“No banker gonna take this from me,” he pauses.

“No Jew lawyer or judge.

No pink-clad feminists, no poofs, no black

boy just off the boat with a cob on about human rights.

Not even me own mum.

No eggheads or EU bureaucrats. No spineless

spastics, no socialized medicine touting NHS doctors and nurses,

no old folk, no neurotic bleeding heart conscientious-objector types

sporting their shameful white poppies on Remembrance Day.

None of the above!” He slams the rifle down on the podium.

“This,” he lingeringly fingers the trigger,

“is where—finally—the buck comes to a stop.”

Several undercover police officers erupt in standing ovation,

as Mike struts back to his seat, proud of the work he has done.

The party chairman

shakes Mike’s hand and invites him

to join the rugby club. Welcome

to the scrum. “A bit rough around

the edges, but he has a certain charm.

Good for pulling the young folk in,”

the club chairman remarks casually later

to his posh golfing buddies over a beer.

*

The blunt lead air-gun pellet bounces off of the birch tree,

and rebounds whizzing thrillingly around the boy’s

blond locks, frustrating the irresistible urge to hunt and kill.

Better guns are advertised in magazines, he thinks.

Dirty Harry on TV.

And now he has that job at the meat-packing factory,

the sky’s the limit, despite all that nonsense at school.

He smells bad all the time, but the blood

and his pristine white abattoir uniform

proudly bear the colors of the English national flag.

Buy British Meat is the slogan

that adorns the company’s messages on billboards

and in the intervals in the evening soaps.

The girlfriend-to-be gags on pork pies,

every time she thinks of him, pony-tail

tucked up neatly under her standard-issue

white health&safety-approved company hat.

She works in accounts. Mike

drools over pictures of ninjas and swordsticks

in off-beat fanzines as he warms up

dinner in the microwave

and watches the guts being washed off of the clothes

in the new Electrolux washing-machine. The appliance

of science. Sci-fi explains it all.

*

Mike queues up to sign for the package

and the license at the Post Office

among the decrepit picking up their pensions

and the losers pocketing the giros

they scuttle off to squander in betting shops and pubs.

*

The woods are a welcoming place.

Mike takes a deep breath of cool, wet,

refreshing bark-scented air,

dead leaves crunched underfoot,

folk foraging for firewood,

fungi, ticks, fauna, psychos, family outings—

a sweet bouquet of decay.

(14) Michael Angel

The mower shooting

has kicked up a helluva fuss.

The cop copter is back up in the air

overhead. Mike cuts off

through the poplar trees,

darts across the playing field

and scrambles up the well-camouflaged

leafy embankment into the art workshop

of the C of E governed Richard of Gloucester

Middle School closed for recess

that he used to attend.

The walls are adorned with artwork

to celebrate the Harvest Festival

that some kids must have been allowed in

to prepare during the vac. Corn dollies

hang from the ceiling. Some sick fuck

has drawn a wicker man. Fruit is piled

up in imagination for Autumn

and bottled in jars. The fields

blaze with purging flame. Two cop helicopters

now are circling in, a SWAT team moving stealthily

up the embankment. Gruff voices through

trumpets of megaphones,

calling him Michael—no-one ever called him that—

urging him to turn himself in. Mike knows

the game is up, upends the shotgun

and nuzzles it carefully under his chin, says

a little last prayer to Mother Mary,

and paints the stucco of the art workshop ceiling

with a fresco of lead shot, blood, brains

and ears of corn.

“Target down”, a voice crackles over a walkie-

talkie and the cops and the crime-scene clean-up folk move in.

*

Song # 9 The School Bullies’ Barbers Quartet

We drag you to the underground,

as soon as down appears on chin.

We toy a razor round

your throat but never stick it in.

We order how you cut your hair

to fit in with the crew.

We mock you when your crotch is bare

and when pubes grow there too.

We haunt you in the shower

and on the hockey field.

The teachers give us power

to use the sticks we wield.

We are the social barbers,

expunging all dissent,

our emblem blood-smeared razors,

white foam emolument.

We pull your baby teeth in ways

no fairy can reward.

We darken sunny summer days

when we are sad or bored.