Brockham Bonfire
- Details
- Written November 2006
The village processes its lanes, torched with cleansing,
Doors and dormers opened to release the year’s demons
Assembled over months of brooding and pent-up angers
Fuelled by absence and fresh arrivals who claim attention
And yearn acceptance.
Skewered alive, then rotated cyclically against the grain
Destroying repute in a tirade of expletives
Upsetting the apple cart with back-yard sauce,
And auctioned in competitive exhibition
For someone else’s charity.
Guy admits his guilt twenty-five feet above recanting As the effigy explodes descending into hell
With global warming above branches of Eden
Systematically built up preserving ecology’s end
In apocalyptic peace.
The gibbet stands bleak against volcanic clouds
With the fullest of moons rounded to create tidal energy
And inflamed passions straining bare-breasted and unmasked
In a noose with a large knot over the nape of the neck,
Destroying the man within.
Victimised to receive our pet hates on the altar of sacrifice
Where national tension bursts into fury with a myriad of stars
Kaleidoscoped over the green, teeming with its thousands,
Extinguished as they land on hand-held sparklers,
Sprinkling our generation with gun powder.
Catholic censers swing with smoke billowing above the fire,
Incensed to fight for the right to say their piece
From a speaker’s chair, a monarch’s throne or the despatch box,
Challenging the premier’s actions with question-time profanities
That waken the dead in me.
5 November 2006
Written at St Christopher's, Westgate after attending the Brockham Bonfire