My salary is a few dinars
I only have a tent
I am not a President.

How can I resign?
I have no authority.
My country is run by the masses.

I ordered the military
to go home
and not fire their weapons.

How can I do crimes?
Libya has no king, no parliament, no president.
There are no peaceful demonstrations.

If Cameron can find
one penny of asset in Britain
I will poke
my fingers in his eyes.

The young people are given drugs
by Al Qa'eda.
These terrorists are a few cells.

My people love me
They will die for Moammar
They will die.

© Malcolm Saunders (Malpoet)


Gaddaffi says he will not surrender

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Retired, cantankerous, libertarian and occasionally a poet, I am probably malodorous, but seek to avoid being malicious or malevolent so I vent malapert musings through malpoetry. Malpoet blog

Performed by Elvis McGonagall at the Gilded Balloon press launch at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2009.

We asked Elvis to tell us a bit more about his poem. This is what he said:

"The poem was written around the time Cameron was elected Tory leader and had made a speech to the party conference that the media were wetting themselves over. I think he said "Change, optimism, hope" in an interview. I just thought - oh for f**k's sake I've heard all this before. Empty soundbites in classical tricola.

I still use it in my live sets - people seem to find it funny.

As for writing topical stuff - well I guess it's better than venting one's spleen via a bottle of gin and a blunderbuss aimed at the purveyors of cant and hypocrisy."

Learn more about Elvis, HERE

Some maintain that a just society
puts the needs of the poor
before the demands of the rich.

Yet consider the plight
of the six members of the present cabinet
who are not yet millionaires.

What kind of a just society is it that forces
Vince Cable to buy his shirts
and business studies books from Oxfam?

What kind of a just society sends
Andrew Lansley crawling to loan sharks
to pay for his prescription charges?

What kind of a just society lets Eric Pickles
queue for three hours for his Housing Benefit,
due to a scarcity of counter staff?

What kind of a just society confers
on Baroness Warsi the status of poor
non-Oxbridge educated Asian woman?

What kind of a just society could invent
the Chief-whip’s whip-round for Patrick McLoughlin’s
bus fare to his Derbyshire constituency?

What kind of a just society reduces
Danny Alexander to selling the Big Issue
on the streets of Glasgow at the weekend?

Expect the other twenty three to soon dig deep
into their combined sixty-three millions
and bail out their poverty-stricken colleagues.

© Colin Watts

Colin Watts is author of four collections of poems. He works in Adult Learning and is not a millionaire. http://www.colinwatts.net/

Dear Rupert: What a splendid ruse
To spin your money-losing News!
I cannot emphasise enough
Our need to look just slightly tough
On all monopolies and such
As may appear to own too much;
Because we must be seen to be
As fair as brute expediency
Allows us, more or less, to seem
Without reducing fat cats' cream.

We know your dear News Corporation
Has much adorned our fragrant nation
With paywalls, phone-taps, racism, tits,
Coulson, MacKenzie, other wits
Mostly too numerous to name -
In short, dear chum, the Murdoch fame
Rings out so true across the earth
That it would really not be worth
Inquiring further of your bid;
Indeed, I'd say that if we did,
It could not help but be a stain
And blot upon our Monarch's reign.

Rupert, it is an honour to
Yield up this little gift to you
(And, frankly, it can only be
A short time till the BBC
Is offered, with humility,
To gladden your senility).
Yours most sincerely, Jerry Hunt,
Your faithful Culture Sec., and Conservative.

© Philip Challinor

Rupert Murdoch offers to 'spin off' Sky News for BSkyB deal

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Weblog: The Curmudgeon - You'll come for the curses. You'll stay for the mudgeonry.
Books: Philip Challinor's Books

"You could say 'hi' and 'bye-bye,'
but all our friends' children,
even the ones younger than you,
were speaking in sentences.
We didn't worry (well, not much)
because we knew you could read.
You were about eighteen months.
We bundled you up, went for a walk.
There was a British Petroleum
gas station across the street—
that's what it was called back then,
British Petroleum—
and right there, in your stroller,
you let your thumb fall from your mouth,
you pointed to the sign and you yelled,
'B P!'
We didn't tell too many people.
We didn't want to brag."



© Erika Dreifus


28 Feb 2011: NIH launches largest oil spill health study
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Erika Dreifus lives in New York City. Her poems have appeared in American Journal of Nursing, Christian Science Monitor, Moment magazine, and others. She is also the author of Quiet Americans: Stories. www.erikadreifus.com

Suppose they gave a speech and no-one clapped
or thought that we should go and ‘make a stand’
in foreign lands - those places on a map
with borders shifting in the bloodied sand?

No longer having privates to parade
suppose those uniforms just gathered dust
in warehouses, with rows of hand grenades
(all out of date) and rifles gone to rust.?

Suppose the tanks had all been turned instead
to ploughshares, and those trigger finger skills
were used in fixing cars and baking bread,
constructing Lego, tapping at cashpoint tills?

Suppose those soldiers destined to expire
lived on unharmed and lovely, played unbruised
still with their limbs intact, and friendly fire
was just another name for barbecues?

Suppose bored surgeons took up tapestry
on silent nights in trauma wards, now bare,
instead of knitting skin and artery
and mopping up the bloody carnage there?

Suppose the Major Generals were diffused
made safe, and left to graze on their estates
and jingoistic marching bands reused
for floral dances at bright summer fetes?

Suppose these sorry telegrams decayed
in stationery cupboards, yellow-brown
and all the debts had long since been repaid
and grave-diggers laid off all over town?

© Clare Kirwan

UK to make 11,000 of its armed forces redundant

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Clare Kirwan is a member of Liverpool's Dead Good Poets Society and blogs as Broken Biro

I ran for President and they said I lost.
I ran a blog when hundreds of thousands of people
came onto the streets and begged me to lead them.
I ran into trouble.

Iran is my homeland.
Iran is a birthplace of civilisation.
Iran of poets and philosophers is hidden.
Iran is in trouble.

I ran Iran in my mind to a better place.
I cannot run.
Iran is my home.
To die at home is the dream of everyone.

© Malcolm Saunders (Malpoet)

Iran: Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi 'arrested'
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Retired, cantankerous, libertarian and occasionally a poet, I am probably malodorous, but seek to avoid being malicious or malevolent so I vent malapert musings through malpoetry.