by David Roderick

Hobbits.

Nurses are hobbits,
Doctors are bats.
Patients are were-wolves,
Porters are cats.

Merely in a trance, I wish their pay to be,
From meaning to brevity: let their pay be free,
From austerity cuts put in place to save,
A country from mortuary, or an early grave.

They said that this was needed, because the banks want bust,
But they only made the nurses, yet more robust.

But surely they do need the pay from yesterday:
Never mind inflation, impounding that today.

Without sensibility of what is going on,
We shall sing austerity like a chirping song.

But it begets misery, personal and all;
With all this austerity, society shall stall.

Hysteria is purviewed about self-sacrifice;
But here in the boiler house, life is but a vice.

The more that the statutes control intransigence,
Managers get the blame for a merry dance.

Yet this is not progressive: statutes, nor the law,
Are not dynamic entities; some people want more,
Sense and goodwill reasons from the furtive fruits,
Of banal instructions, not stemming from the truth.

How shall we be organised? How shall we belove?
To emancipate from statutes –- like they're a holy dove.

Surely infrastructure is not a holy grail.
Surely our progress, happens like a snail.

This is unprogressive. Laws we can't abide,
To cover all our faces: to go away and hide.

If I had the answer, miracles appear,
To be apart from faction –- like a dear old dear.

I hope they'll find the answer –- as though we are all one.
With noble Brexit, this progress has begun.

But where will it cease?
That's for none to see.
Whether we will get it;
or whether we'll be free.