Funeral Games

For the Poetry Challenge

Lately Theresa May,
in a less than stately statement,
left the British footlights
of the word stage.
She claimed affinity
with that other Tory empress:
Thatcher ‘Hammer of the worker’.
And, within the prison
of her bright red lines;
hobbled by a narrow crimson suit;
she botched her exit stage right.

Who, in naked ambition,
will next wear the new clothes?
What clot; or clown;
what feckless absurdity?
will drape that tired flag
over the tattered lion of Albion.

Soft, maleable dictators are
despots all the same.
We shouldn’t dress their tomb
In aught but black, pall cloth.
Red is only fit for martyrs,
not monsters clad in Prada suits.