Cardboard citadel

The sour notes of curdled milk

that swoop around our airy sense of self

arpeggiate a rich discordant guilt

that shatters windows round the citadel.

Guilt means that we’re more than worth exploiting

for the work-’til-90 attitudes it breeds.

We pined for salvation so we appointed

a demagogue with tiny hands. That leads.

God sent him down, so when he so insisted

we rebuilt our citadel of sturdy card,

we worked a couple years then had a picnic,

the flimsy concrete lacked a certain spark!

But as in ancient Sodom and Gomorrah

where, I’m sure, damnation mingled with malt loaf,

I know our Lot was God as in the Torah

and not an ageing, power-hungry oaf.