The Uninvited Guest

Boris Johnson is foreign secretary.
Driving, I see a yellow convertible.
I think, I’d like to go for a picnic in that car
Sit under some cherry trees, drink
champagne like when we were at
Oxford, in the parks, by the river…

But how could I do this? I know
that it is wrong that Boris Johnson
Is foreign secretary, so I can’t relax
until this wrong is righted, and I,
with my white privilege and education,
I need to give what I can to the world.

‘Relax, relax’, they cry. But perhaps one
more post on the bugle, one more comment,
could save our fair land, for what is the point
of being enlightened and strong,
if one cannot use it for good?

I want to go for lunch with a friend, forget
All this and smell frying and feel the sun
kindly warming my sensory body, but Boris
Johnson is foreign secretary and my brain
Must take over, must not let my body act.

A child outside the co-op I was once, thinking
that small blossom tree there was everything,
And the ten minutes I could play there while
my mum shopped was freedom. Around me
Thatcher dismantled mining family lives,
smashed our playgrounds, our glasshouses,
all our beautiful flowers.

That small tree was always there with a
10p mix-up underneath it, sometimes blowing
in the wind, sometimes hot sun; commercial
forces changed the co-op’s name time and
time again. Arthur Scargill came to my mum’s
work party, his stomach fat and his plate piled
higher than any I’ve ever seen. Us children

in the party couldn’t get over their stomachs,
and their plates, so huge like slag-heaps.
‘You got his autograph?’ I asked my temporary 9
year old accomplice, with the 80s PC college parents.
‘No, he’s bad! Like those Enid Blyton books you
were reading’, and then we pretended to be in a
band, shouting, screaming, kissing
our air guitars into the dark.

Boris Johnson is still foreign secretary. I
don’t even know what he’s worth – it’s not
tears.