My Father's Rise to Superstardom

Mr Father, the Fascist Dictator


As a child I witnessed my father's rise
To superstardon. He donned his disguise
And marched out onto the stage. Some
Had called his rise meteoric but I know now
That he did it by stepping over the bent backs
Of peasants and beggars and orphans

His obsessive, possessive love
Drove us away. And now all that is left
Are his memory of those glory days
Are hundreds of faded photographs
Scattered across a shattered no-man's land
And shreds of music from a ghostly
Regiments' marching band.

I recall him repeating a thousand time
The words his own father passed on
'He said, 'Remember son,
'There is no action without consequence'
And then I wonder whatever did you do
Before you found a cause to attach
Your megalomania too?

And I remember that towards the end
As drooping and drooling he stumbled
down the street and the people began
to laugh, talk about him and the crowd
Which had once parted before him
Now spit contemptuously into his face
And now the people They laugh, they talk,
They cry, they gorged on his downfall

But he did not beg, he did not cry
You do not beg for absolution
You do not consent to a cease-fire
You believed that you were Christ
And could walk upon water
But instead you sank beneath the ocean
At one with the creatures who live beneath
A monstrous ogre under the sea.