If

by Martin Rowson

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are telling you its contents don't inspire;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
Based on evidence that you're a liar;
If you could say, when you stood for election.
That you'd do this or that, however crass,
While simultaneously, upon reflection,
Readying yourself for your volte face...

If you can say, straight-faced, you think Fraternity
Will guide your every step, yet think it's fine
To deny your party's own paternity
And run away from every picket line;
If you can blithely organise a witch hunt
On anyone if this will guarantee
You consequently reassure some rich cunt
And keep spreading the lies though all can see...

If you behold a whole electoral system
That's so unfit it's worse than a disease
But say (though never quite getting to list them)
"Fix this? It's not in my priorities";
If you can see your country being broken;
Trashed; by fascist bigots' bluster struck,
But say "This is no time to be awoken!
We're going to build a better Clusterfuck!"

If you can dream (but only when you're sleeping);
If you can think (so quiet it seems you don't);
If you can make a stand (but then start creeping
Away from where you stood, saying you won't);
If you can see the poorest people queuing
For food banks or a place where they'll keep warm
And think that this endorses you pursuing
Yet more Public Sector so-called "Reforms"...

If you can use a playbook that you reckon
Works, though it's three decades out of date;
If you can see the chance of power beckon
And yet won't see the failing British State
Is so beyond repair that this whole nation
Is doomed - and let me now be quite explicit -
Then your placebos for resuscitation
Mean, that when they call it, you're complicit...

If you, to sum up, continue being wooden,
More woodily than forests full of trees,
More woodenly than puppets, then you should in
All honesty admit: it's to appease;
And if you think that that is Opposition,
And means the next election's duly won;
Even if it does, Keir, my suspicion's
That that's no Labour Government, my son!

In May 2020 the award-winning cartoonist Martin Rowson set himself the challenge of writing a Lockdown Diary in verse. The result is Plague Songs, a unique cycle of furious, bleakly comic and often offensive poems about COVID-19, fiercely inventive and desperately funny. Rowson, who recovered from the virus at the start of the year (‘sweating in freezing fits, embalmed in bed/ In sulphurous miasmata, my joints like broken walnuts,/ With hogtied eyeballs and less energy than dissipating smoke’) records in manic verse the long lockdown Summer of 2020 – coughs and sneezes, lockdown-haircuts, funerals and furloughs, hangovers and hauntings, track and trace, when Death and Pestilence were playing on the swings and visiting the elderly in their Care Homes.

Plague Songs is also book about living in Banarnia – a nightmarish world of jingoism and xenophobia, hierarchy and inequality, government incompetence, Boris Johnson’s world-beating wet dreams, and the deadly twin viruses of stupidity and selfishness. What rhymes with COVID except bovid? Is Matt Hancock the Tory Party’s answer to Fred West? Does every shroud have a silver lining?

Plague Songs is also available here on CD, set to music by Welsh musician and playwright Jon Tregenna.

Recalled to Life

by Martin Rowson

You’ve been stuck indoors so long you’re Monte Christo’d,
Scratched days runed on the walls,
Your eyes Ben Gunning madly,
So stir crazy now most mornings you can’t stir.

You’ve been stuck inside so long you’ve gone full Withnail
Breakfast every morning
From last night’s takeout’s tinfoil
Cold Korma which you spoon in with a shoehorn

You’ve been stuck inside so long that you’ve Rasputined,
Charles Manson in the mirror,
Homer Simpsoned in your y-fronts
De-evolving til you’re now the Missing Link

You’ve been stuck indoors so long you’ll Dr Manette,
But you’ve been recalled to life!
The shops have opened! There’s a fire sale
On strait-jackets and shrouds on down the High Street!

Cover image: Martin Rowson

Cultural Marxism

by Martin Rowson

I met a Cultural Marxist
Who took me to Swan Lake
"Those swans denote the Class War!"
Quoth he. I found his take
Compelling if naive, but now
I'm told it's a disgrace
By a Cultural Fascist
Who then shot me in the face.

Plague Songs - It Cures What Ails Ya!

by Martin Rowson

One should not mock the chronic sick,
And nor should we mock Dominic
Whose road-based therapies recall,
Damascus-bound, those of St Paul
Who was, you lot should be reminded,
On a road trip when unblinded.
Dom need make no apology!
It’s not just opthalmology
That sees Road Treatment’s benefits!
It’s a cure-all for the many! It’s
A tested and well tried procedure
From whooping cough to paraplegia!
For instance, the old dean of Keble’s
Gout’s returned: drive him to Peebles!
Abjure the lure of penicillin!
Simply drive to Enniskillin!
Infantile paralysis?
Why not try a drive to Diss?
Your child it born with a cleft palate;
Drive the brat to Shepton Mallet!
A cerebral catastrophe?
Fixed by a drive to Leigh-on-Sea.
You find your mum’s airways restricted?
Motor her to the Peak District;
A femur pops out of its socket?
Drive all the way to Drumnadrochit.
Obviously if you have a stroke,
It’s in the car to Basingstoke;
And likewise cardiac arrest
Demands a drive to Bristol West!
So if your stomach ulcer bleeds
Jump in the car and drive to Leeds;
Caries rot your yellow teeth,
They gleam before you’ve got to Neath;
Struck down with Huntington’s Chorea?
Simply drive to Hazelmere.
A touch of cancer? With a whoosh
Drive off to Ashby-de-la-Zouch!
And when they say you’ve caught malaria -
Hull Regeneration Area!
Just even feeling sort of sick
You’ll cure on drives to Walberswick
And when they say you’ve got Corona
A nice long drive to Barcelona
Should see you right! Whate’er you have
Just punch a route in your sat nav
And soon, on the A23,
You’ll find the perfect remedy!
All you have to do is DRIVE! It
Cures what ails ya! Or go private.