Bryan Murphy- A Poem

Ruling Out The Equaliser

Tinpot dictator? Capable enough to snuff out

the Thatcher brat’s attempted coup,

to woo a Swiss dictator who understands

the need for PR stunts

like this award of half a Cup of Nations

to a microstate where oil flows like blood.

Face is all, money the make-up to salvage it.

From his second-best purse, the dictator’s son

empties a year’s earnings of half the population

at the feet of the “National Lightning”,

151^st best team in our world.

Opponents, like officials, calculate their due,

and duly act as though they’ve got it.

Lightning strikes Libya and Senegal

from the path to glory,

before orange-shirted “Elephants”

trample the usurpers,

restore a semblance of merit

to the spectacle,

which no-one watches live.

The circus moves on. South Africa next.

The world’s attention floodlights fail.

A shroud once more encases

Equatorial Guinea’s heart of darkness.

What happens now? History regurgitates.

Oil powers the wheels of bulldozers,

clearing shanties for developers,

not for the souls who live there.

Migrants get harassed by bribe-sucking cops

with inflated stop-and-search concessions.

Students are acquainted with jails,

the continent’s worst, lest they protest

when summit-bound dignitaries

come from afar, some months hence.

A news blackout leaves the rest

to our imagination.

The sport itself still searches

among warehouses full of its gold

for the beauty it has sloughed:

cynical, corrupt, creeping

every day closer to the apex of its hubris,

every moment more akin to Equatorial Guinea.

Bryan Murphy is a former teacher and translator who now concentrates on his own words. A lifelong soccer fan, he divides his time among England, Italy and the wider world. His work has recently appeared in Descant, Eunoia Review, Indigo Rising, Rose & Thorn, The Camel Saloon, The Pygmy Giant, The Rainbow Rose, The View from Here and Transparent Words. A novella of ideas, Goodbye Padania, is forthcoming. www.bryanmurphy.eu