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In the Samizdat Tradition of Writing against the Machine |
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Critical Poetry—Alan Morrison (Brighton, England) For more highly critical verse, see Critical Poems. Why am I a dissident? Because I grew up on the wrong side of the fence during Thatcherism, awoke to the principles of socialism - to me, the simple belief that life is there to share, not to grab - through first hand experience of poverty, and have spent my life coming up against various guises of establishment bullies, charlatans, self-servers and discriminative employers - none of which has surprised me much since I was perfectly aware of such non-democratic fixtures to sham Western 'democracy' since my formative years. I try in life, especially in the public sphere, to be as truthful and vocal as I can be, which as many know, tends to put obstacles in one's path along the way. I am also passionately anti-stigma regards mental illness, having suffered myself from Pure Obsessive Disorder (a form of OCD) since I was a child. The effects of this illness have shaped my life so far and proven incompatible with a conventional existence, and are seemingly only endurable if allied with an equally obsessive artistic pursuit - in my case, poetry and writing.
Radical Quads Easy for ‘em Cambridge Blues n’ Oxford Reds to talk of rah-rah radical politics in their blimming college rags when they’ve never been in rags – ‘n the same with their chatter of revolution when they’ve never felt their tummies turn in retching revolutions of hunger pangs – ‘n all this ‘opium of the masses’ polemic when no doubt those poets among ‘em dope up in their oak-panelled dorms a’ night on its modern equivalent – summing brown? – no doubt paying homage to their silver-spooned Roman’ic heroes, Shelley, Byron, n’ all those other blowsy layabouts.
If it was up to me I’d cut off their nosh n’ grog, have ‘em haunting round soup kitchens in them immaculately laundered lawns n’ quads, shivering round makeshift paraffin heaters, then see if they still have the fire and dander to put the bourgeoisie in front of firing squads – any case, if they did, who’d fire the rifles when every bleeding one of them – to do it by the book – would be up against those walls, being members of those very landed classes they seek to overthrow – all pomp n’ brasses if you ask me: revolution, plaything of the bourgeoisie.
SuffraGen1 Modern English polite society … A canting, lie-loving, fact-hating, scribbling, chattering, wealth-hunting, pleasure-hunting, celebrity-hunting mob —George Bernard Shaw, An Unsocial Socialist
Dithery old men with rain in their wellies2: once angry young men with fire in their bellies.
Fishing fresh excuses: politics: spice and spin for pinstriped neurotics,
hot air and no trousers to the new SuffraGen channelled through Seroxat and masturbation.
The big tits of Truth burst forth from their dam: bulging the cleavage of tabloid synoptics.
Now is the age of the anxious young man. ……………………………………..
1 SuffraGen = an amalgam of Suffrage and Generation 2 wellies = Wellington boots, used for rainy weather in England 3 synoptics = summaries of events, as in the Synoptic Gospels in the Bible
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