Promises

Promises

 

(An Ode to John Howard on the Day of his

Election to the Prime Ministership of Australia)

  

Their lips dripping promises like poison

Into the ears and minds of those they exploit

That they were intended to serve,

Politicians of every hue, like snakes

Shed lies like scales, and policies full of promise

Are sloughed of as the snake,

Grown fat on the fulfilment of its own ambition,

Sheds its skin to reveal a new and different creature;

Its skin now bright and shining with the colours of new lies

As it begins its slow and sinuous dance, until victims,

Mesmerized by the subtly shifting patterns of colour all around

Are immobilized, caught between fight and flight,

Attempting to assimilate the contradiction that

Only in the breaking of election promises

Lies their fulfilment.

All around now, the colourful coils slowly start to squeeze…

 

By

 

David Lloyd Rowlands

 

(First Published in “The Liquid Crystal”, by The International Library of Poetry, 2002)