David Erdos

David Erdos

David Erdos is an actor, writer, director with over 300 professional credits. He is a published poet, playwright, essayist and illustrator. He has lectured on all disciplines in theatre and film for leading performing arts colleges, schools and universities around the world.  

Cameron's Crawl
Monday, 13 November 2023 14:11

Cameron's Crawl

Published in Poetry

Cameron's Crawl

by David Erdos 

Somewhere in Chess sits that secret moment
When the board turns to fire as the predetermined vision
Ignites, and when the parade of each piece before the gaze
Of fate proves astounding, revealing how what’s decided
Is framed by both the cosmic black and star white

The moving of politicians perhaps is much more
Than just the opposite of that process. The phrase cabinet
Reshuffle is the desperate pose of the checked,
For this moving of mates is arbitrary at best,
Not strategic. It is an attempt to hide behind order

As the Rat Ship slides into sinking and as chaos
Flames below deck. It is worse that wankers
Who frot inside their own pockets. And is not
As calm as cards who slice cleanly between fortune
And decline. It is a last turgid act in which

Unable to plan, you move madly. As if you were
Cheating at scrabble or leaving and losing your
Shit. It’s a sign. As recently as yesterday Sunak still
Supported Suella, sadly another Indian woman
Who made her boorish predessor seem astute.

I’ve used this joke before but I cannot resist
Its repeating as this shrill sounding siren
Kept singing a sick c for Canute. Make light
Of those letters to read what I think of these people
Who strive to lead us, just as the Pied Pipist

Led rats. And lets not forget his dark price
And who he took back to the mountain. Which one
Of us will stay beach bound when survival’s song
Resounds flat? The walls are closing in, made of sand,
And Rishi soon will slump, buried. Alarmed by Starmer

Who is somewhat surprisingly on the rise, Rishi
Returns from under his rock, the crab Cameron
Who has been licking probably the same pearls
And Oysters that Sunak’s tax-free wife must assize.
No doubt there are living the dream of past days

Creamed by glory. Which in Politics can last minutes
Or a half score of years; which the public will never get back,
Pawns, priests and even Queens sacrificed, or soldiers dead.
Pensions frozen. Alan Bennett was right, live to 90 and still
Be able to boil an egg you’re held dear. This happened

With Oswald Mosley and soon, it will happen with Boris.
Though God forbid he continues his toilet squat for that long.
But TV will soon have him back, which shows how we should
All make our returns quick to reading, or to the piano placed
In the parlour, where families once fused around song.

When it happens it will show how stupid we are,
And clearly how guileless as we allow the erosion
Of standards like Suella’s empty sea to suck shores
Of their welcome and sheen. And so Cameron crawls,
Lobster licking, with crap and caviar soon combining

To stain and stink step and door. Behind which Sunak
Steers towards the After Dinner Speech Circuit.
Not to mention the book that by Christmas 24 or 25
Will feed trash, whether placed in the shops,
Or languishing in a dustbin. The print of another

Displaced slim-hipped shadow placing a fat-faced fool
There beside him as the sinking ship does a wheelie
To become our next fatal car-crash, as we careen
Between choice and the lack of it bequeathed to us.
Under his storm, Sunak’s steering is not a safe return

To bland bays but a mayday signal at best, the wave
Of a soon to be anonymous arm in its drowning.
Even if he wins, it’s not worth it. As it seems no decision
Made while aboard that careless craft can convey
What needs to happen. And so Cameron’s call

And each news unworthy item is another nail
In the coffin that has already been thrown out to sea.
We just have to secure it, that’s all. But have you ever tried
To hammer hard through wild water? It chills chance,
Hands and motion, stopping it dead. Are fish free?
Or just biding time until we can trap them.

It’s a good job Democracy’s broken, and that equal
For all cannot be, or else the elite would be unable
To roam, forget and then net us. For just as we are
Cod-driven, they would have us with chips, easily.
Politics now, today is what Pop was in my childhood:

Cannibalistic. Music sweetened. But this is sour stuff.

Spit back. Checkmate. Unvote. Change.

Condemn.

Flee.

(Russell) Branded
Sunday, 17 September 2023 17:34

(Russell) Branded

Published in Poetry

(Russell) Branded

Dispatches, Channel 4, 16/9/23; commons image above by Brian Solis

It always happens, it seems; fame’s warped privilege
Breeds perversion, as years on, Russell Brand’s women
With the much-used stamp of abuse; as sex replaced heroin,
Said to flow as it does or did through his system,
Each compulsion subverting his victims’ lives;
Time’s conversion and creating new moments
In which the female finger points to accuse.

Brand came to fame (and on it, too) through sensation,
By masturbating fat builders, or pissing his pants on the street.
All on his first TV show, busting taboos like burst blisters,
And naturally passing pus to us, by sucking the dark
Like boiled sweets. Later, with his hairsprayed halo of hair
And Dickensian style demeanour, he fopped and preened
Like a peacock while emitting a sexually lurid squall,

By describing the ‘knobstacle course’ each woman he won
Had completed in order to gain and gratify his attention,
As if this self-styled Pope of the penis required the kissing
Of ring, cock and ball to feel accepted, or ‘grailed’ as his was
The prize to please women. They were, like addiction the thing
To work through to reclaim - some form of acceptable stance
In the world, as with his recent adaptation of wellness,

His Rock God chic now transplanted by a guru’s robe:
Healing games - to justify or atone for the sins he’s supplanting,
Or some misinformed fool’s failed evolution as a cauterising
Cock stokes faith’s flame. Brand sees himself now as brave,
But has perhaps always done so. In daring conventions,
He possibly sought to expose all of society’s ills,
As his current conspiratorial kick charts conviction;

Forced into online denials he offers his rejection of screen
And stage now as rose and also proof of his new dreams
Of direction, in which he grooms if not girls, then opinions.
Rebranding himself in clear colours as he childishly
Crayons truth. And he may of course in this way,
Hope to chase and chart some forgiveness.
For what we can never admit is deep rooted,

And even talking about the soul is no search.
For his new drug is truth but what of the new heroines
He is taking towards their revelations, as a growing collection
Of women who in speaking out now spill the hurt
Held at his hands, as allegedly when he was thirty,
A sixteen-year-old girl sucked his penis, granting
One of ‘them blowjobs which make mascara run’,

His past joke. Along with the great gagging noise
With which those who watch porn are familiar,
With sex as a parody of forced passion, his erudition,
Part of his pose and poise is a spoke breaking away
From the wheel as his bike of self-belief begins rolling
Out of control as fate willing, another celebrity snag
Snares a life. Did his former heroin habits help

To subdue the flesh-fed fire inside him? And is or was
This imbalance the method by which Russell will smear
Child and wife? Watching Channel Four’s Dispatches
Last night, it was clear that another pale God
Has been toppled; these present-day icons lack
The imprimatur of the past, as Russell now rolls
Not just away from all screens but under the same rock

As Rolf Harris, or, Stuart Hall, Gary Glitter, and you-know-who:
He recast as the modern monster who stalks the broadcast bay
Truth’s waves smother. For Brand at best with that hairdo
And affected talk cartoons well, alongside Savile’s shtick.
Brand had no cigar, just his penis, but this has been said
To burn; tease as torture and upon the fair flesh
Of young women; false myth as fake magic.

Or the blood clots begat by sick spells.
There is something clearly wrong with the men
Who rage this form of war on all women.
Something as deficient as the need to escape
Each bright morning through the former
Golden brown’s mired dye. Or through the obliterations
Of booze, or mindless sex, or by gambling.

Something within us which leads to the out of body state,
Or glazed eye. Is it lust as possession? Perhaps.
But not all who feel lust create victims. Privilege then,
Sensed or granted, or wilfully chased defines why;
And why we subjugate all that’s soft, ruining it with hate’s
Hardness; or feel the need to prove ourselves better
And in some warped way justify, our particular place

At the top. But as the old saying states, the only way
To go is down when you get there. Beware of what’s coming.
And why it needs to come. Can love die? You just have
To feel it to know. And this is the case that boys like Brand
Need to answer. If you have abused women the only thing
Spilling from you should be the sour stuff stirred by sorrow.
Look, lad; souls strip you. It seems that Narcissus’ pool
                                                                            has run dry.

It Hurts To Swallow
Tuesday, 28 March 2023 10:24

It Hurts To Swallow

Published in Poetry

It Hurts To Swallow

by David Erdos, with image above by Stu Mayhew

Passed yesterday, and to what should be all horror,
The Genetic Engineering and Precision Breeding Act 2023
‘Which provides for the release, marketing of and risk assessment
Of food and feed produced from such plants and animals’
Bred from false tongues for the free. Who are not. It begins.

The deprivation of taste by the tasteless, by which I mean those
Who seek to truncate you, from stomach to soul at this time.
For this is a royally sanctioned decree, as it is on King Charles III
Headed paper; the next step to further synthesize what we’re eating,
And where even the sucking of lemons will bare the tang of death’s lime.

They will grow cows in a box, and wrench chickens out by the neck
From a test-tube. Lambs, to the slaughter, will be slurry and synth
And milkshaked. The wording of this preliminary bill mentions plants,
So this could be bad news too for the vegans, with only Jainists
Surviving as they wait beneath trees for earthquakes.

The clot thickens. The plot, such as it is, appears simple:
Reduce us by stages. Remove what we were. Seal the shell.
With over-zinced fish, or carbohydrates designed as fat’s anchor;
Or with tomato juice red with bloodshed, as the micro-chipped pips
Signal hell. God, if you’re there, in whatever form, rip this menu,

Do not sign the bill and in conscience, let those who have
Spill their guts. For once swallowed the stain of interference
Mutates you. We will be a race overrun and less human
Than we purport to be now. Hope’s door shuts. If I over-react
Then I do so sincerely. This bill is one of so many others passed

By us. The wool pulled’s not a sheep’s then, but a fibreglass
Feed as throats cut.

Sinking Sunella
Wednesday, 15 March 2023 08:15

Sinking Sunella

Published in Poetry

 Sinking Sunella

by David Erdos

Like a reverse shepherd she stands
Dispelling flocks into darkness
For there is no light from Sunella
As she seeks to wreak the same spell

As unpriti Patel, whose monstrous heart
Made air ugly and so Braverman casts
Dense reflection across the shallow
But sin-streaked poisoned well.

These two women share the same race
And now we're all running, hot on the tail
Not of migrants but possibly reason itself.
For to me It is not about who has the right

To whichever land endures trespass,
Nor is it about shelter and the sharing
Of earth to stop stealth. Instead it is about
Decisions, dictates, and the ruination

Of standards. This is a current time without
Boundaries, starting perhaps with the wall
From which Berlin healed it's long wound;
A time in which Russia's iron curtain

Was lifted and which Vladimir Putin
Has ruffled across a carpet of blood
As kids fall. And so the question extends
As it always does with the human:

What are we to each other
And in the most basic sense; do we care?
From the Christian concept to the Jews
House of meeting; from the brotherhoods

Within Islam and the sisterhood of all girls
How can these two women adopt the same
Bastardy in their bitching and in what
Climate can any nations flag be unfurled.

This is an obvious piece.
There is no sophistication at all
To its message. It's lines are short,
Even standard. But beneath the brief

There'a a sea which has its own rules
About who it grants passage. You are not
Poseidon Sunella. But are you a Canute?

Each wave's free. Before the brink
England sinks when these empty hands
Begin pointing. With these directionless
Sails and Aunt Sally's heading the ship

Nemo flees.

This Boy's Book
Friday, 06 January 2023 16:46

This Boy's Book

Published in Poetry

This Boy's Book

by David Erdos

The title of course says it all. Spare part, split from purpose.
Second to none in all senses, or sad boy as ballast as someone else

Steers the ship. Possibly favoured now by the young for the sensationalism
He’s seeking, if anchored now by ambition: Macbeth’s idiot in the telling

As with every stand he takes the truth trips. Meantime his book
Slips into Spain. How strategic. Get it covered up in a language

Far enough away from your own, but close enough to English ex-pats
And to keen translators and tourists. America would have been too

Damn brazen, so this Sir-stirred sly smuggling grants safe distance
For love’s lacklustre bombs once they’re thrown. Who is advising you, son,

Now you’ve freed yourself from your father, who lizard or not
Will be licking the wounds you inflict on his throne. Not to mention

Your bro, whom you accuse now of violence. This is what your wife did
On Oprah, as her crocodile tears of injustice and abuse from all quarters

Made her both Cinderella and Annie and chilled even Piers Morgan’s
Plump bones. What is wrong with you? Privilege can be a prison,

But for those inside lack of purpose and reason too, matters not
In a world which has moved away from the true, into treason

Which is what you are doing, or would have once been accused of
As you sought to complete such a plot. You state that you have killed

Twenty-five in the name of your Nan and survival, but describing them
As chess pieces as well as inhuman is a Third Man type sentence

Likening you to H. Lime. Have you seen that film, silly boy, or even
It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum’s racist clown show? You once referred

To an Indian soldier as your P dash dash dash friend. Disgust climbs
From the gut to the gap between your tongue and brain, baby,

Booby, buffoon, and yes, brother, who is doing I believe your bird’s
Bidding as she caws now in your ear. Fucked by flak she purports

To be ever so humble, all the while stripping shadows to make
A spotlight everlasting with which to expunge her own fears.

There would seem to be no real end to the need to justify
Their existence. They even impose their imprimateur

On Mandela as they try to ensnare us all on Netflix.
With his slightly unformed blood-blanched face, and hers

Imploring all to adore her. You said you wanted your lives
To be private, well, here’s a public one off the wrist,

For your tricks. What will the Poet Laureate say? His next verse
Will comment on Charles’ coronation. But Simon this is the story

Of a wrecking ball wrenched from within. As a completely
Understandable wound, chiefly the loss of a mother, unseats

And topples someone unfit for the peak. Yet wanting it all the same,
Hence the reclaiming of both pram and rattle, one hand dispensing rage

While the other seeks to stifle the mouth as it speaks. And yet,
You did as all wild boys did; drugs, booze and beauties.

Outlandish behaviour, the typical tantrums of the teen. We know that.
And have doubtless done it too, but you’d make of your anecdotage

A bible, as if old before your time your told story would resemble
Your great great Grand-uncle’s, who forsook Royalty’s fat tit

For thin tat. He married an American too, and abdicated. You had
Nothing to forego and that issue is why your tiny eyes fill our screen.

You want us to know your full pain but you do not have Edward
The Second’s hot poker. And you are not a word wizard like Marlowe,

That is if you wrote this brown from guile’s green. This coming Monday
Your book arrives here, but you have already worsened the wound

With back-biting, all too consciously aping your Mother,
By sucking on a televised interview’s tacky teat. We will see it

On Sunday here, or rather not see it. As what you look for,
As she also found can’t compete with the surrounding context

You’re in and in which you and your wretched wife will be sinking.
That is unless you turn away, Harry. Listen; honour thy own intentions

And in the long run by walking away you’ll complete
The path she could not, your much mishandled Mother.

But by whom is the question. Until that is answered,
Your aches will shake no-one and every win will seem sinful

And serve only compound love’s defeat.

Expelling England by the Pound
Wednesday, 28 September 2022 07:44

Expelling England by the Pound

Published in Poetry

Expelling England by the Pound

by David Erdos

Selling England By the Pound is the name of a famous Genesis
Album, one of their best where the lyrics mix social comment
With romantic muse and word-play, but in England this week,
Kwarteng’s cutting of tax to high earners raises the rich’s rates
Of disinterest in the fate of the poor’s pale array

To near farcical heights as the Hitler-haired Rees-Mogg
Preens and prattles. His offshore millions pre-Brexit banked
Won’t be risked. While the rest of us count the coins
As with the death of twenty and fifty pound notes we lose value;
The measuring of increasingly meagre resources

And the accounting of such will be brisk. As prices rise
And people go to bed in leg-warmers, or in their coats,
Fearing winter, which after the summer’s sweltering heat
Claims the night. Which is colder round here,
Than a witches tit. That old saying makes me nostalgic

For the world in which I first learned what was right.
That world was flawed, don’t get me wrong, but in saying,
It still felt somehow safer, especially as we are spiralling now.
Doom’s a drug. From the crash of the Crown, to the sense
That there is no-one left to protect us. In Liverpool, Sir Keir

Steers his conference into a possible moment in which
The concept of chance and change gets a plug.
‘This could be a moment for Labour!’ He says. But how to define
That sharp second? His speech was platitudes, mostly; a verbal
Toasting that was more like a cup of tea, or Dad-hug.

We needed to hear it of course. As Prime Minister Distruss,
Unknowing, says nothing. Ill-equipped, or unwilling, she was
Once described as inept. I wonder what she listens to? I doubt
Its Peter Gabriel’s singing, Steve Hackett’s solos, or those
Tony Banks runs; so which muse or fuse has she kept?

Phil Collins’ drums and Mike Rutherford’s bass ground
That album. But how are we grounded, as once the rug’s
Been pulled, the floor fails. Everything is happening so fast,
Even Fiona Bruce on the Ten O Clock news says it.
Torn from her antiques, it appears we’re the items

Which could very well be up for sale. England has flailed.
And would seem to be failing. There is no Moonlit Knight
Now approaching and the track After the Ordeal can’t be
Honoured as events today stall that song. Why can’t we get
Correct representation? And what is wrong with a system

That lets people like Truss come along? Incompetence
Pours like incontinence in this country. Meanwhile Italy
Startles with its Far Right turn. Events spike. Where is hope
To be housed, practically? In religion? For the religious, yes,
But for others, cold and untold stories strike. It is no longer

Safe to assume, Was it ever? Everything now seems uncertain.
Same as it ever was? Talking Heads. About as far as you get
From those boys from Charterhouse, Pimlico and
Phil Collins’ Chiswick, but if I listen to Once in a Lifetime
Those lyrics truly fit today’s dread. ‘This is not my

Beautiful House!’ ‘This is not my Beautiful Wife!’ and etc.
‘How did I get here?’ How indeed say the dead.
Who must be watching appalled, or glad to be out of it,
Maybe. My own departed are as alien now as far space.
Part of another time, a lost age, which can’t really have

Been all that different. Perhaps my friend, its the pace.
Things seemed slower. But then we had Thatcher,
Pinochet and Pol Pot. And they were leaders for sure,
Albeit in the wrong direction. Now, all sheep stumble,
As the dog has lost voice and plot. I think about the real cost

Of today’s moronic decisions. Whoever wrote Macbeth
Really had it. Time is an idiot’s story. So, are we to learn it,
Or one day look back proudly on the vomitous vows
We won’t stomach and the lines and life lessons
That in needing so much more, we forgot?

What Liz Leaves: Elizabeth the Second and the End of England
Friday, 09 September 2022 09:26

What Liz Leaves: Elizabeth the Second and the End of England

Published in Poetry

What Liz Leaves: Elizabeth the Second and the End of England

by David Erdos

Truss reads her Wikipedia entry on The Queen, and does so, badly
As Huw Edwards extemporises while expelling suitably sombre tones
To fill air that will now be as dead as the very idea of England
Which Elizabeth represented, with her sense of duty duly observed,

Like a dare. For how long can one hold on to the values vouchsafed
By her father, which she clearly clung to, perhaps as a means to survive
The infamies that her various associations engendered, and all this
Post Diana and despite Andrew whose sticky hands on the honey

Have corrupted both throne and hive. Heathcote Williams’ Royal
Babylon equals Kenneth Anger’s old book on film-stars, but for most,
This small woman managed to avoid the vast stain which smeared
The flag, set at half mast now, and forever, as with her death,

We die also, either without, or in pain. Should we lick further stamps,
They will simply be farewell kisses to a notional mother and grandma, too
For us all, who remember the past and some of those old social standards
In which everyone became Cinderella with a kick or shot at the ball.

The oiks knew their place and afforded her adoration. She rose above
Broken roof-tiles to make fantasies for dulled crowds, that fit into
The mantelpiece frame and the TV screen at 3pm every Christmas,
Her job was to make us all feel familiar and not rained on, or subject

To the unhealthy strain of clogged clouds. In turn, we kept her
Close at hand and closer still in the pocket, jangling liz to feel lucky,
As if the tossing of coins echoed wealth, and yet the space further split
When we contemplated their lifestyle and considered the stories

That spoke of darkened corridors set for stealth. And yet, through it all
And despite accusation; Elizabeth Windsor, like a masthead graced storm
And sea, to retain a calm course which even The Crown would not ruffle,
Claire Foy and Olivia Coleman each exposing the firm hand that led each

Corgi. Despite Phillip’s gaffs and his gallivanting, despite rule and rumour,
And her sister’s existential sluttery, consorting with criminals, as well as
Peter Sellers, Mick Jagger, Mustique and mystery masking a truly alien way
To be, David Icke might say that, having written of lizards. But the things

We will never know will remind us of just how far it is we all live
From the real facts of life, and thus, the real story. And while the remaining
Royals are not Shakespeare’s, perhaps these small scale stealings are ones
That even Marlowe might forgive. For there is enough subplot still,

As William and Harry both boil and bubble, as one wife rehearses
A debutante’s dream from days old, while the other Lady Macbeths,
Planning her own starred ascension, and quickly rewriting her exile
To charter and charm from the cold. Meanwhile, for now.

Their time -dulled Dad understudies, going on at last after decades,
Which must have put heart and soul under strain. I can see tussles
And tears below stairs and no doubt up and down them, the country
Cut up into slices, as if Lear’s darker purpose had been limerick

Not quatrain. And so, The Queen leaves the stage, while another Liz
Breaks the backdrop, exposing the bare brick behind us and the cracks
To come, the roof leaks. As it does everywhere. But who or what
Can now seal it? Where is our nation and who do we truly have

Who can speak? We kill them when they do. Heathcote Williams wrote
That Elizabeth the First murdered Marlowe. And many believe that Diana –
Well, this isn’t the day to say that. For me, my prized Liz, was the always
Beautiful Taylor, but we have lost with this monarch both curiosity

And the cat. The wise one who knew but who never revealed the full
Picture, for no portrait captures the woman she was, or her time.
Now she is historical fact, and Vicky and Liz are statistics, and the eyes
That sized up everyone from Churchill to Johnson turn from this unsteady

Earth to the lyme. And yet I too was touched by the photo of that tiny
Widow, alone last year when her husband of 70 years slipped the net.
Will she catch him once more in the far estate they have moved to,
Or does the soul in dispensing become part of something else which forgets

What we are. What we were. And what we cannot be, ever. Leaders.
We’re trying. But now the Liz we have left is suspect. Camelot is long crushed,
Even balmoral is bungalowed, somehow. Ruined reputations and the lack
Of substance soon spills. Elizabeth leaves us now with a test: will a republic

Rise to reclaim things, or will we ‘ribena’, watering wine’s richness still?
Everything is now up for grabs. King Charles III beats Mike Bartlett.
The coming days could bring omen. Or pitch portent, friends.
The Smith’s album plays. The crest needs a new designer, Regina.

The Queen is dead. So is England. Or what we thought it was once.

That past ends.

 

Distruss
Tuesday, 23 August 2022 08:07

Distruss

Published in Poetry

Distruss

by David Erdos

And so the shit squats, or is on holiday somewhere,
Sitting out the next fortnight, in which finally ousted.
He’s flushed to join the sluice his sick soul has always
Been part of, while all around we’re fragmenting

Because of whose hand is wiping; but that doesn’t matter
As we’ll be wiping our arse with a brush. Hard times
Threaten for sure to out-dickens Dickens. Fuelled by
This new energy crisis, where bills by October

Will be three times more than last year,
While nothing can be done until Bore-is pulls up
His trousers. If sidling across he espouses, turn off
The TV, shed a tear for a time that’s long lost,

When there were leaders to believe in.
I am talking after Christ and Mohammed.
I can’t think when, if you press me, but maybe
Somewhere, they are there. If not on this earth,

Then in the multiverse, maybe. Where figures like
Ken Campbell and Stephen Hawking. administer ministries
Built on care. Today, its Sunak, or Truss; disaster in a dress,
Proto-Thatcher, but whose policies, its reported go all the way

Back to Ted Heath. Does a new three-day week loom,
As we huddle around a damp matchbox or should we hope
For the return of the heatwave of recent weeks
To helpfully still our teeth? The options inform, and make us

Infirm once considered. The moral high ground has crumbled,
Tec(h)tonically taken down. Now all that remains is the space
Through which numerous political phantoms have foraged,
Eager to feed on our failings to remove and revolt,

The red, white and blue turns to brown. Which is where
We came in, right at the top of this poem. The anal analogy
May be basic, some might say crude, but it works.
The truly ignorant cannot see that we are not even

Atlantis’ broken basement. The spires we built aren’t worth
Saving, and the towers of Brexit make Pisa seem straight.
We’re berserk. Running mad through our halls as the shit
Fate’s shat stains pyjamas. The asylum has ruptured

As the pavilions of the past are sea-seized. Which is here
On dry land, in both your lounge and on High Streets
Along which they would see us all lower, fodder for them
As we freeze later on in the year, or when the next lab gas

Gets cocky, and we fall as we have done for the next
Talking prick. Or pudenda, of course, unconcerned
For our welfare. Govermental glans, they will fuck you,
But will you resist? Suck, or kick. Which is it? Say now.

Before it's too late.
Rip, rise. Surrender.
Distruss. Distress.
Damn them, for putting us here.

Time’s bomb ticks.

Burning Boris
Thursday, 07 July 2022 14:37

Burning Boris

Published in Poetry

Burning Boris

by David Erdos

Burn, then, as we have burned under you!
Spurn yourself! End your era! And let defamation
Trump your own infamy. For just as Kenneth Williams
Cried in the film Carry On Cleo, we all have it in for you,
Bore-is, or as was. Be not free

To do what thou wilt, clear a la Crowley,
A true black magician who had more command
Of his spells. And who at least safeguarded a flame
Unlike the one you have fanned, borne of hatred.
So as you descend then please do so

Down a boulevard straight to Hell.
So that you no longer besmirch the byways
And highways of England, as you once cavorted
And stained Oxbridge halls, even as you claw on,
Filling cabinets you should empty, a blown,

Bloated squatter, expelling squits past brass balls.
It is reported that fifty rats flew your ship, yet still
You stamped through dark water. Hoisting what was left
Of your ark to foam oceans that could only spit as you walked.
What you have allowed is simply the underlining of Thatcher

Who once sank British sailors, I hear her wretched refrains
When you talk, albeit with less fluency, as you make an oil slick
Of language. And you a former editor! Shameful. You do not
Have the words, just the cheek, as you try to take charge
Of a world turning to crumbling biscuit about you.

Bull in a China shop doesn’t catch you, as you rupture air
When you speak and lie open-mouthed, your heart and mind
Closed but ransacked by your lust for power and for some
Desperate frau’s nippled peak. I despise you, of course.
As has been seen in these poems. But then when you were

Elected your own sister appeared on TV. On Channel 4’s
Sad attempt to satirise and to capture the charm of Peter Cook
And Co. They’d have had you. They’d have shown the shit
At your seat. And still you won’t go. Is it another ploy,
Resignation? Do you hope or plan a new crisis on a wider stage

Until then? Michael Gove has been sacked. Back to Middle Earth,
Gimpy Gollum, along with Richi, but what riches now to defend?
Will they have you back on quiz shows, and say that all is forgiven,
Or will you populate the far places that those in disrepute
Duly prowl? Under college pal Cameron’s soft rock, or wherever

Kevin Spacey finds safe harbour. Is there a club, or cave
To protect you? Will you worship Bohemian Grove’s jungle owl?
You will feather your nest with stolen swans, and plucked eagles.
Crushed doves will be pate for you to spread on your toast.
Or you will publish your book and make the next million,

In the sick society you have symptomed you will refresh
While we roast. How do you sleep? Was Lennon’s hurtful song
To McCartney. But that came from the anger of the dream
They shared falling fowl. But I will still quote those words
And fire them at you. You praised the mandate you were given

To lie and falsely smile while I scowl. Seeing it all as your right
You praise the fact that ‘our brilliant and Darwinian system
Will bring about a new leader’ as if being Tory PM was a birthright,
That contained natural life. And while you may be a beast,
You are not noble, just savage. To me, a man alone, it’s a horror

That you have had even one choice of wife. So, let’s see
If your current Lady Macbeth who has not unsexed for gall
Remains with you, now that shadows call you, let alone
A ghost’s knife. I have my suspicions of course, as this is not
A faithful age. You have shown that. What you are is a roadblock

To the particular path of the free. Will it open now?
There’s scant hope. But then who will replace you. Someone
Moderate? Man, I doubt it. For this is where the blue
Becomes black. And the right-wing hardliners demand a somewhat
Desperate direction, leaving the left to plan progress

And to shine once more through the slack. For today,
I rejoice. But you will still be there tomorrow.
Burn, bore. I bridle. But what life now gains
May you lack. Do not re-emerge. Be as a submarine, Boris.
Seek only the depths that define you. I hound you down
To hellfire. And as your ship starts sinking and the waters rise

Truth attacks.

Volodymr Vladimir
Thursday, 10 March 2022 14:33

Volodymr Vladimir

Published in Poetry

Volodymr Vladimir

by David Erdos

I never thought I would put the words Robert Rinder
In one of these poems, but when he wrote of Zelensky
In the Evening Standard, eyes bright – the story

Struck hard, as did Zelensky’s piano rendition
Of Hava Nagila for Rinder, not to mention his role
As light’s leader when pitted against Putin’s night.

As with Vaclav Havel before, moving from dissident
To President, free of fiction, Volodymr Zelensky
Has shown how the world we once deemed real

Is absurd as he turns the fanciful tale of his self-
Penned and self-starring sitcom into an option
In which actual talent trumps power with a legitimate

Win for the word. Now the entertainer he was
And the appeal he engendered emboldens
The Ukrainian nation to feature in this new play;

Which is one of survival, sustained across
A continuing horror series, where the episode
Book (trade name: Bible) starts trying to plot

Better ways to make the protagonist show
That he and they are the heroes in a world at war
And a country that wishes to invoke different days.

And so the sitcom stands up to cold eyed aggression
And evil, and to an antagonist altered by just too much
Tyranny. As Putin performs his own maligned epic,

His own moustacheless version of Stalin to make
The Public Number One Enemy. Not just to Ukraine
But to the world as we know it, as so many institutions

And system turns Russia back to the time detailed
In the first films of Tarkovsky, in which Andrei Rublev
Saw hardships for which even the starkness of Stalker

Or Gogol’s Dead Souls could make free. Today, though
Koba The Dread can’t hold a handle to Putin. Who seems
To move through this madness with a psychopath’s lack

Of care. It is the worst kind of plot, belonging no doubt
To a shit-com, or some late night B-Movie in which
Both standards and sense have been dared.

In America not too long ago there was a rash of
What if we had the right leaders type films,
Or TV series: Dave. Clear and Present Danger.

The West Wing. The American President. Designated
Survivor, before House of Cards toppled both expectation
And what representation itself could achieve. There was

A gaping void these shows filled. They were candy, not
For kids, but for adults, convincing folk while boxsetting
That everything beyond remained free. Putin has shown

It was not in this worthless expression of power,
While Zelensky, a writer from the other side of page
Sagas on. He may get to be a legend one day,

A statue of course in the making, blowing out both
Breath and colour before a future voice sings his song.
What will they sing of Putin? Perhaps the soundtrack

Sneers they gave Hitler. Does he have one ball? Is he
Sleeping and who could now take him out? Only
The men who are employed to protect him. As he

Attends to his mistress and his baby boys, does he
Doubt? Or even think. Certainly that lizard look
Keeps all secrets. As Volodymr emotes, he is fighting;

Not so Vladimir; who watches his world as it burns
Both in Kyiv and in Moscow. As Zelensky becomes
Luke Skywalker, Putin pours what’s left of his soul

Into Vader. But how does one hero win against
A world’s fear? The sitcom as such is a slice of life
In this country. In fact, in all countries they have

More or less, the same scheme. It purports to show
Life as it is being lived by its people and it attempts
Through the comic to reveal tragedy. Tom Good

Lost his job. Basil Fawlty falls into a breakdown.
Steptoe can’t leave father, and even the sense stung
Larry David can’t bask. But as fate casts its net

To fry us all this one actor mirrors his equivalent’s
Motives even if they exist at all, or stay masked
To show that the dream to make a change can still

Happen. You just have to get through the fire.
But then that’s the thing about fire. There is no-one
To turn to and not even a convenient God you can ask.

And so they fight on as we think of them, daily.
That sitcom becomes every story. We just have to
Write it well, that’s the task.

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