POLITICAL POEMS BY Kelsey Thornton

 Ballade 
for someone who complained my verse mentioned politics.
 
I really am in something of a fix:
      I’ve Pen and Palette poems to compose,
But find there is a dictum that restricts
       My choice of subject, and instead bestows
       A limit to my muse, demands she goes
Only to places that some other ticks,
       Ignoring subjects right beneath my nose.
I haven’t got to mention politics.
 
Just to throw something extra in the mix:
        We don’t exempt great poets, I suppose.
Dryden liked giving statesmen kicks,
        And Byron mocked his parliamentary foes;
        And Shelley can be named as one of those 
Whose poems weren’t afraid to throw some bricks.
        I’m to keep shtum and contemplate my toes.
I haven’t got to mention politics.
 
At risk of getting rather too prolix
       To grumble on and to bewail my woes,
I’ll get the poets’ numbers up to six
       With Swift and Yeats and Marvell, which just shows
       That verse of that sort’s not an idle pose.
This is a subject that routinely picks
        Poets to slander statesman so-and-sos.
I haven’t got to mention politics.
 
                     Envoi
        Prince, I can’t write sonnets to the rose.
My muse, I fear, is up to other tricks.
        If statesmen will have foibles to expose,
I might be forced to mention politics
 
 
Troilus and Cressida
 
The Stratford schoolboy, impatient with hard Greek
Vows that one day he’ll tell truth about Troy
And all those cardboard heroes who annoy
The lad forced to admire them every week.
When finally he gets the chance to speak,
He will contrive to show with wicked joy
These ‘heroes’ that torment the growing boy
Are selfish, petty, lustful, greedy, weak.
He will invent the lowest gutter mind
To tell them it’s just lechery and war;
Their heroine a manipulative whore,
And fabled Helen of the self-same kind,
Ajax a buffoon, Achilles a cad.
Schoolboy revenge upon the Iliad.
 
 
Julius Caesar
 
Caesar, like Hal, shows what it takes to rule;
It quiets no country to be just a man
With all his weaknesses, for he must plan
The deeds of Empire and be no man’s fool.
He must be Caesar, not the Senate’s tool.
Conspirators will claim that he outran
The needs of state, which he’s not greater than.
But Revolution is a slippery school.
Mark Antony learns that he’s no triumvir;
Short-sighted Cassius makes a fatal slip,
Misreading victory. The state’s a ship
Even well-meaning Brutus cannot steer.
However noble, and however skilled,
They can’t survive without the man they killed.
 
Othello, the Moor of Venice
 
Othello’s colour is a simple fact 
But we find out what simple facts can mean
When hate manipulates the way they’re seen,
And jealousy, determined to detract 
From noble honour, labours to extract
Foul meanings from fair words, and with obscene
Skill plots to orchestrate the steps between
Naïve belief and a destructive act.
 
Things have no meaning till we think they do.
It’s in the mind Iago takes control,
Playing the prejudice deep in the soul
Against black, Christian, Barbarian, Jew.
Consider if the base of your belief
Is any stronger than a handkerchief.