Poetry Day

It’s National Poetry Day i the UK, and the designated topic is “Heroes and Heroines” — so as a sign of solidarity with my new home, I’m submitting this (with a special nod to Phil Cubeta):
 

The Liberal Christ Gives a Press Conference
 
I would have walked on the water
But I wasn’t fully insured.
And the BMA sent a writ my way
With the very first leper I cured.
 
I would’ve preached a golden sermon
But I didn’t like the look of the mount.
And I would’ve fed fifty thousand
But the press wasn’t there to count.
 
And the businessmen in the temple
Had a team of coppers on the door.
And if I’d spent a year in the desert
I’d have lost my pension for sure.
 
I would’ve turned the water into wine
But they weren’t giving licenses.
And I would have died and been crucified
But like – you know how it is.
 
I’m going to shave off my beard
And cut my hair,
Buy myself some bulletproof
Underwear
I’m the Liberal Christ
And I’ve got no blood to spare.
 
Adrian Mitchell

 

2 thoughts on “Poetry Day

  1. Wow. I wouldn’t have expected this choice of poems from you. It’s a pretty scathing condemnation of liberalism. Reads like something Ann Coulter might hang on her wall.

  2. Liz, if one reads it as a “liberal vs Conservative” poem, it clearly does sound caustically conservative. I take it, though, that the poem directs its barbs in a “liberal vs radical” sense. That likelihood increases in the context of Adrian Mitchell’s own life; Mitchell described himself as

    My brain socialist
    My heart anarchist
    My eyes pacifist
    My blood revolutionary

    (“Loose Leaf Poem,” cited in the Wikipedia biographic article)
     
    The sentiment is still fierce, but the problem Mitchell cites involves the tepidity of liberal politics, not its traitorousness or complicity with communism (for the latter of which Mitchell might even have congratulated them).

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