Historical Fiction
It has now been established
after due consideration
that the tribe of long-gone Liberal Neanderthals
could not have caused
a blind bit of difference to the outcome
of the bedroom tax the window tax the garden shed tax
or the onslaughts on the poor
that drove so many over the edge off ledges into soup kitchens
and that the Liberal Neanderthals
(who were fond of mammoths and other
woolly ideas) were slowly but surely
integrated into Homo Consapiens by being
brainwashed and mated and by other
self-absorbent means.
They pushed no-one off a cliff
before their swift extinction, leaving only a few
lost deposits and the memory of Nick
with whom many agreed
for a couple of months. They were not bad.
Just powerless, useless, and consigned to the wilderness
of archaeological digs.
Click here for a Guardian article
Click here to buy a copy of Bill’s poetry collection Ringers
Click here for Bill’s New Statesman research project
