XXIV

These polemical pigmies claim that many of the mushrooming

Lumpenproles are prone through desperation to seek out

Sharks for loans –though no one’s forcing them, nor holding

Guns to their heads –No need to, they’ll say, when advertising

Lets them have it with both barrels, bombards them with Midas-

Gilded slogans and mixed messages (as if to patronisingly

Say ordinary people are stupid!); while Wonga languishes

In derelict regulation, resurrecting ‘usury’ at interest of 4,000% –

The moral challenge to Archbishop Welby who threatens

To compete them out of existence by setting up less punitive

Moneylending stalls inside the nation’s temples, Bank

Of the CofE, slogan: Faith, Hope, Charity at 1% APR,

And Salvation for savers via overdraft –while the more hair-

Shirted Christians wrestle with the quandary: would Christ,

Himself, His Nibs, have approved of altruism on condition

Of Returns? Then, attempt to acclimatise their spiritual

Consciences to the new Budget Discount Beatitudes… That’s

Their kind of metier, these dialectical dwarves; that’s their

Gutter-level attempt at polemic –Pah! Polemic! Compost

More like! Rhetorical humectant, mere perfunctory putrefaction…

XXV

In these Austerity days of Alarm Clocks-Back Britain, basking

As we do in the bakelite mentality of wartime privation, we

KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON in blue-rinse altruism

Of donations to humanitarian campaigns and good causes –

All but our own– tagged in tattered charity shops with vintage

Price-tags, antique violet-rinsed assistants ruminating on

Their SWIZZLES MATLOW PARMA VIOLETS or sucking violet creams,

Sipping aromatic violet tea, popping out for furtive puffs

Of violet-coloured cigarettes, tubes of violet-flavoured tobacco

(Purchased from the tar-black, tinted-paned tobacco boutique,

BURKITT, established 1873, and now, in spite of public

Smoking bans, its quixotically archaic clattering till, like

The husk of a beetle, is spluttering back into unfashionable

Business as its retail competitors capitalise on the new vogue

In halcyon curiosities) –gossiping Pepperpots, Tory-parroting

Polyglots of government-sponsored prejudices, nattering

Away about austerities, interlocuting national priorities: