they shall grow not old / as we that are left grow old / they shall not wear so much braid on their shoulders they walk with a stoop / nor watch The World at War in Colour on a loop / they shall no longer be exposed to politicians / and their endless manipulations / of the headline-loving populations / carefully kept in ignorostasis / herded together on a regular basis / to ratify the next conflagration / monitored by an international elite / the world quite literally at their feet / idly dropping crumbs of daily news / to ensure no diminution of the queues / outside the recruitment centres / (apart from a few dissenters / who chewed themselves free of their cable placentas) / in the certain knowledge that when War arrives / they’ll be down in their bunkers with their servants and wives / feasting on canned potato dauphinoise / playing supranational charades / liking viral videos of a photogenic kid in cammo / demonstrating creative ways to personalise ammo / his nationalistic fervour quite incomparable / keen to lie in some corner of a foreign field that will be forever arable / ploughed in with a deal of intelligent ordnance / zoning-in on his Twitter coordinates

they shall not use their mobile phones / to distract from the fact they are actually alone / they shall not hastily lick ice creams around the stick / melting in the fallout double-quick

they shall not be celebrated / & consecrated / in a fancy, brassy box / by an eminent geezer in ermine and fox / all the politicians sweltering in black / the flag-waving crowds out back / smoking / laughing and joking / he was such a cussed ol’ stick / well meaning but a bit thick

no

they fell in vast number / neatly diced as a sainsbury’s cucumber / by a rigorously tested range of machines / that made a killing on the market for such things