The Angry Exile: Constantly Furious

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Friday 26 March 2010

Constantly Furious - not a happy blogger.

It would kind of spoil the name if he was.

Today he seems particularly hacked off with the latest poll results which have Cameron's Tories only 2% ahead of Genghis Brown and his ~~Golden Horde~~ Shower of Shit.

The Labour share of the vote is up to 34%. And, under the bizarre electoral system we enjoy, that means that Labour will somehow, eventually, win the election.

Yes, Labour will remain in Government. Gordon Brown will continue to be Prime Minister. Ed Balls will become Chancellor, for fucks sake. We will be governed by the Unite-puppet Labour party for 5 more years.

Which will be awful. Only the most swivel eyed of Labour voting Pilkington taste testers think five more years is good news, sure. But on the bright side that inane wanker the Tories got to 'rebrand' themselves as a bluish version of Tony Blair's NuLabour will probably disappear up his own jacksie in the fallout. I think the Tories will not easily forgive losing the most winnable election for a dozen years even if, as I've suggested as an outside possibility, Cameron thinks this is a good election to lose and is playing it that way.

Who are you, you 34% who are going to vote Labour? What the fuck is going on in your heads?

Well, 34% is pretty close to the share of the vote they got for Blair's last election as PM, when they got about 9.5 million votes. There are about 6 million employed in the public sector and many more whose employers sell mainly to the public sector. Then there are all the people on benefits plus the tribalist retards who'd happily vote for anything with a red rosette even if it was Margaret Thatcher wearing a fake moustache and demanding to be called Dave. The silver lining is that that lot is a damn sight more than 9 million so a lot of them look like they didn't vote for the grinning mutation last time and won't vote for El Gordo this time.

Do you really, really want this bunch of fuckwits to continue their inept reign over us?

Yep, they would.

Would you enjoy further increases in the already fucking enormous tax burden that that has been steadily loaded onto those that actually work?

Many of them aren't paying it, and of the ones who are plenty of them really aren't - everyone in the public sector might as well be paid their net salary tax free.

Do you want to see a continued growth in the numbers that don't actually work, and sit on their fat arses all day watching televisions that we paid for?

Too busy watching TV to consider that.

Do you believe that after 13 fucking years of fucking up everything they touched, this Government will somehow get a new lease of life after the election and actually start to make everything - anything - better?

Now they're too busy reading the celeb section of the newspaper.

Would you like to see even more taxpayer-funded demonisation and denormalisation of smokers, drinkers, eaters of food and drivers of cars?

Well, as long as it doesn't oooooh Angelina Jolie's adopting an entire village. Wow.

Do you want 5 more years of McBroon lying and gurning and stammering in the House of Commons?

She's got six and half swimming pools, you know.

Would you like to see the Lord High Mandleson grow even more powerful, and end up running every single fucking government department whilst not actually being allowed to attend Parliament?

Shiny, shiny, shiny, everywhere I look. Shiny, shiny.

What Cameron is up against, other than his own policy free blandness of course, are millions who've been more or less conditioned not to think because when they do they're overwhelmed be the sheer bloody pointlessness of deciding between two or three bunches of thieving cunts with the same shite ideas, the same paternalist attitude, the same line in sound bites and, more and more, almost the same fucking policies. The headache starts to go away after a while if you just turn away and start thinking about who'll be in this year's Big Celebrity: Get My Brother Out Of Here.

Fuck it. Now there's two of us who are furious.