Poetry: “Wolves” by Luke Newell

Wolves

After Allen Ginsberg

The worst minds of our fathers’ generation
laugh maniacally as they fuck us to within an inch of our lives,
And tell us how it’s our fault because we’re so entitled because
We want to buy a house, because we drink and smoke and
Watch videos of cats on YouTube but they don’t realise that we
Don’t want to live like this but what choice do we have
When we are ruled by reptilian monarchs under colonial jewels
Who preach from golden thrones that we are all in this together,
Who have never stood in a breadline
Who complain about the homeless from their fifty empty rooms
Who never found out from experience that no matter how good you are
That Santa just doesn’t visit some children.
Governed by the colour grey who we gave a body and called a prime minister
Who preaches that we’re stronger together,
But does everything to tear us asunder.
Her party, an army of clowns in six-grand suits
who think that minimum wage and job security makes an NHS doctor greedy
Who try to change the meaning of the word human to fit their malignant narrative
Who built a parliament around fucking kids and hiding the bodies
Who make shit programmes on channel four to seem less cuntish
And more like us plebs—because that what we really want—
Another Eton mess acting like we aren’t screwed.
Who love to watch a fox torn apart by Jack Russells
because what else can bored rich white people do?
Human spelling errors that try to tell us how to run schools
but can barely talk for braying and sneering during PMQs.
Who tell mothers to feed their kids cheap gruel
But spend £124 on breakfasts and seventy grand on a fucking duckhouse.
Selling guns to ISIS, Building a wall in Calais
Giving a state visit to a 73-year-old orange relic from the golden age of Jim Crow
Just for being white.
What is he doing from the comfort of his golf course?
Who grabs women by the pussy and laughs and gets off
Because when will a rich white man ever face trial for sexual assault?
Making sure that the wars our fathers fought meant nothing because
Nazis are fine young men and genocidal white men can’t be terrorists
But a black man speaking freely is a son of a bitch and deserves to lose his job even though
the dotard will tweet free speech for The White! The Straight! The Rich! The Men!
And fuck everyone else!
A man who always says
Later      Later      Later       Later         Later
When it comes to six-hundred being gunned down at a concert,
But has been chomping at the bit for ten years about a birth certificate.
Who can’t stand the sight of little rocket man
Who brags about his giant nuclear button
Made bigger by the sight of his infant’s hands
And infantile love of playing war.
Who demands a parade and fifty thousand marching
But Cadet Bone Spurs refused to march through the jungles of ‘Nam,
And will let so many young men die in the desert
Because it makes his dick so hard, so big, the biglyest of every
Draft dodging son of a bitch.
Who refuses to let trans people serve because £8.4 million isn’t healthcare for 6,000 soldiers,
It’s trips to a private golf course, where the men are men
and their bathrooms are fortresses for men
where they claim this isn’t true, that they are examples of inclusion,
with hatred etched into the straight cis lines of every grin, of every press conference,
Of every tweet, of every appearance on Fox News.
Who lets black blood paint the streets
And defends to the death a flag stitched together from the
Cotton and tears and broken dreams of slaves,
That he flies from a sycamore tree
Haunted with the ghosts of sixty million stolen from their homes.
And has the audacity to say their children, their children’s children
Can’t speak out against against him.
They are more that flag than a
Thrift store white supremacist who is Only enough of a stable genius
To leave the burning crosses and white sheets at home.
Remember the good old days when getting a blow job was enough for impeachment?
But blowing Putin for votes is allowed?
Being investigated for fraud is allowed?
Being a treasonous piece of shit is allowed
Because there are enough supporters who will kill in his name
And wear the blood like war paint
And march gladly into the war on our future.

Our future is not flying cars.
Our future isn’t Futurama or The Jetsons,
It is Fallout. A nuclear holocaust that he can watch from some bunker somewhere.
That the clowns and murderers and rapists and paedophiles that
Call themselves a parliament can watch from a bunker somewhere.
We will do whatever it takes to survive their legacy
Of Scorched Earth and Broken Promises.
And we will howl like wolves
And lament for our lives
And we will burn the bodies.

Let them have their bunkers.
We’ll do the rest.

Luke Newell is a poet and author from Wolverhampton, England. His work has been published by the 1888 Centre and The Good Men Project. He hopes to begin filming his first screenplay this year. You can find him on Twitter at @newelly249.

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