The fault lies in old Westminster;
more corroded cogs kaput
as tarnished chains sever
each link they constitute,
The fault, lies in
plain blinkered sight;
acrid smoke screens
our house alight,
The fault
a caldera;
lava churns our vaults;
The fault? Lies in old Westminster.
Antonia Sara Zenkevitch
At the Met headquarters
There’s another call out,
To gather all available officers
To attend another London riot,
When they muster at the order
The streets are uncannily quiet,
Far too silent to signal peace,
The van drivers see the flickering TVs
As the vanguards of PSUs cruise,
They tell their colleagues in the carriers
“Every household is watching the news”
Then, they get closer to Westminster
Where they each get a first-hand view,
Of the riot’s epicentre,
Met commanders aren’t sure what to do,
It started in the Common’s Chamber
And it shows no sign at all of ending,
Ministers displaying criminal behaviour,
They’d have to send the forces in,
Some Brexiteers were running with cleavers
And Boris Johnson was singing
As law-enforcers arrest law-makers
To the sound of ancient plaster cracking
And answering war cries from Remainers,
The police chief rethinks the cons of fast-tracking
While arresting MPs from Tories and Labour,
Extracting an uninterested Corbyn,
If he’d not been killed by Mogg’s sabre
It looks like he’d soon have died of boredom,
The Speaker is still trying hard to call order
As someone nearby asks the chief
“Sir, where do we put the cordon?”
Antonia Sara Zenkevitch
Writ on goatskin?
A tissue of lies,
Deals unknit
Before ink dries,
The absent crown
Still not her coronet
During lawless days
We won’t forget,
No kind heart sweats,
Sweats as vile pacts made,
No sweets at the palisade
Drafts delayed, rejected,
Remade, re-inspected,
Hush, do not speak it;
That untaken truth;
We do not have a government,
Wet ink gives no proof.
Now without opening
She spins, spins into
A longer stride,
Poison chalice at her side,
To bypass the beginning,
Towers falling, burning
The sepulcher is rolling,
We have a speaker
Yet no plans for them to speak
But broken lines intoning,
Hush, do not say it;
The lie “Secure and stable”,
We do not have a government
Just unsigned deals upon the table,
Unspoken, mandate unratified,
Parliamentary debate denied
Until the ink inscribed is dry
So we may examine the hide.
Antonia Sara Zenkevitch
This was written after the last election, which was a farce. It centers around an arcane piece of British law that involves writing on goatskin. Before this had been done and before the Queen had opened parliament, therefore allowing MPs to debate, deals were apparently already being made to further the Brexit mission. During that period it can be argued we effectively had no legally recognised government and definitely not one in which all our elected representatives had a voice. Disturbingly, a deal made between the Conservative Party and Northern Ireland’s DUP in order to get enough seats to legally form a government threatens the Good Friday Agreement and peace in Northern Ireland.
Britain snickers through deep Brexit blues,
As the unelected bows to the unelected,
A divided nation, half of us did not choose
Any farcical cabal’s anti-migrant objective,
Those with least even more likely to lose
To every elite tax-haven collective,
From democracy, we are so far removed,
That we abandon any political perspective
To obsess about the new PM’s shoes,
Not the trampled rights of the unprotected,
Media spins our views with soundbite news
As if the world will be most avidly affected,
Not by policy, prejudice, deception or misuse
But by the footwear a woman has selected.
Antonia Zenkevitch
(This one was written – and first shared on other media – just after the 2016 referendum when May took over after our previous PM resigned.)
The integrity initiative Now lacks integrity, Public resources Used improperly To damage opposition MPs, Most notedly The leader of the Labour Party, Yet Tory ministers refuse to see This is misappropriation; Stealing public money To spread misinformation, The opposite in fact To the stated modus operandi; Of how the institute must act, Conservatives provide a dodgy alibi, Saying Russians hacked Into the Institute of Integrity, While it may have veracity This explanation lacks authority, For we must ask ourselves why It is the opposition who is undermined At what, for Tory’s, is an opportune time, While the institute’s security is only questioned When Tory ministers put it in the frame With no eloquent response to the suggestion That this should never happen again. Antonia Sara Zenkevitch
The 48% 