My poem on the Scottish referendum result, published on Poetry 24.  Big thanks to Laura Taylor for switching me on to the blog..

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I wrote this in January, 1967, in protest at a bishop proposing to bless a nuclear weapon submarine, carrying the then nuclear weapon Polaris. I believe I submitted it to the editor of Peace News, but do not think it was published. Apologies for irregularities of metre and rhyme!

'At Birkenhead, on the twenty-fifth of February,

I'll be chug, chug, chugging across on the ferry,

T...

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Cyclops

Facing the world through his single myopic eye

Cyclops could not see the depths of perspective

those essential details that are there for you & I

The fixed stare from his unnatural gaze alarmed one & all

pity that poor guy with no balance in his views of life

can he help being a fascist with a mind so very small?

©Rhumour

May2nd 2014

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When paranoia the gang has,

It throws the propaganda information

And all the Russians they would hang,

As not the Ukrainian population.

When dragons and chimera

In the illegal admin appear

They write the laws of terra

Which frighten you with fear.

Their poisonous will and power

Can bring every man to death.

With every coming hour

The news runs out of brea...

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Poem for Bob Crow (cheers W.H. Auden)

Stop all the docks, cut off the trains, 
Start the mariners striking, be still the cranes, 
Silence the busses and with muffled bullhorn 
Bring out the coffin, let the workers come. 

Let politicians circle, moaning overhead 
confessing on the airwaves, He Is RED, 
Put nooses round the white necks of the bosses, 
Let the riot policemen carry their o...

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we gave you bread and circuses

now it’s bingo cards and beer

to distract you, so you’re unaware

your future’s disappeared.

© Steve Pottinger

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