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SPAD-LANDS
By Randall Stephen Hall @
I watched you on the big screen
The other night
And the beating of your soul.
I could see and feel the rate of your heart
And from the start those open staring eyes.
Wide open and running like a wood burner.
With your windows flung open to let out
The extravagant heat
From a brass neck.
The gaze and disbelief of the interviewer.
Tight suited and looking for a way in
Like any wood louse would.
Just a wee slater, chipping away
To remove your roof tiles and let in
A bit of rain from the falling heavens.
Expressing the pressure of this hot boiler room.
Now under the gaze of 400 million
With pressure mounting.
For seconds out you could only respond
On the back foot.
Returning the service from your warm up act
And the wringing out of Mr. Bell.
With one almighty wooden cross
Carried on his back, self scourging
Yet attacking you from these stations of the cross.
Radio, TV and Social Media.
Tearful and repentant
Laying himself open to abject apology
While predicting the end of his career.
The tolling Bell rang on and kept on ringing
Until he was done, with the reverberations
Beginning to shake and resound in our ears
For us, we the public, entitled to the truth, we listen.
Receiving two versions of an Old Testament
Old school, book, that only a special advisor
Could remember or explain away as “ just advice”.
Can we call a special advisor
A pair of safe hands?
If he has a club in one hand and a sharp carrot in the other?
Embedded, parasitic and growing
In the shadows of Spad-Land.
Playing snooker with our politicians lives.
Testing them with their rich advice
Which balls to watch
And in which pockets to play.
Who has the real say here?
The SPAD or the politician?
What unelected, undemocratic madness is this?
The Bell in the tower still rings
As we wait for the heavens to fall.
Fostered we are orphaned to power
Un-mothered by a clear and open remembering
To forget.
Cash for ash and money
In whose bank accounts?
As this heat, lost, rises heavenward.
The crowd roar and hoot like a single creature
Pulling at its chains, with everyone a potential voter.
(Just imagine if we all voted as a citizens requirement?)
Everyone a potential voter for change
As our Christmas Panto de-rails
Into the usual cuttings of old newspapers
Recycled hopes and the seasons victory
Over conscious political action.
The slumbering has begun.
Our interviewer wrestles with the facts
And turning to the ex Minister for Chipped Wood
Reacts, struggling to square one story with the other
Two tales as similar as Swarzanegger and Devito in “TWINS”.
But she will have none of it.
Absolutely not . . . “My electorate” she says
While Bell, that braying donkey
With all “his intimidating bulk”
Gets the blame for the whole botched
Bag of hot pellets.
Heaped up on his doubly crossed back.
Every last one, every last pound coin.
Gone up in smoke and a heretics flame
A quandary now to the party faithful.
Then a pause . . . for air.
Punctuated by an odd and ever-changing
Set of expressions
Emanating from across the waves
Of a tempest, a fury, and a raging sea
Of contradictions from our First Minister.
But there the interview and the second act ends
Like another Twelfth Night dressed as Pantomime
With too many “Bottoms” producing hot air.
And the moment postponed once more. . . wrapped and packed
For Christmas.
Just like Peter and the sausage scandal.
Peter and the Cowboy Dinners.
Peter and the builder’s bang, boom and bust.
The Haas Talks, Nama, Charter N.I. and now, oh mama
How much of this stuff can we digest?
How much trust lost to SPAD-GATE?
A slow burner, with an unravelling thread.
“SPAD-U-LIKE.”
Round men in big suits
With big heads and no real roots
In our democracy.
Living in the bellys
of our leaders with no guts
For change.
While a seed bed of dragon’s teeth
Grow in the head, the hearts and minds
Of the First Minister’s electorate.
Her electorate.
To bring us a winter crop of independent MLAs perhaps.
Born in the Spring
When the cold recedes and the truth
Is revealed from under the ice.
Beyond the Assembly
In the country and the city
White horses, and a raging tide of opinion
Rise up to wash the soiled steps of the Assembly clean.
But that’s another story . . . for another time.
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