The Man On Television

The man on television
Tells us
We have wasted the last eight weeks.
We have not loved enough,
Not broken enough rules,
Nor spread the pestilence
As wide as we could have.

He tells us
We needn’t have stayed in our homes,
We needn’t have stayed safe,
We should have driven far away
To make sure the NHS had more people
To treat, more covid to fight against,
More breathless corpses to intubate.

The man, unelected,
Sits in a government garden,
And shows us how to disregard the law,
How he’s in charge of elected politicians,
Demonstrates that Lockdown never mattered,
That it is officially over,
That the country needs to be infected again.

The man’s sleeves are rolled up
To his elbows and show his hairy arms.
His mouth moves in tight motions,
A speaking medlar, a bargain oracle,
And impresses on the nation
How superior he is, how intelligent he is,
So much more intelligent than we are.

The man on television
Wants us
To create a second peak,
A third and fourth, forever,
To cleanse the country
Of the old and unproductive
To celebrate his greatness.