The Death of Baroness Thatcher
after Patricia McGuigan and Alexander Pope
Her hair was a headmistress dreaming
of again being allowed to use the cane.
Her ambition was a brass door knocker
on what was once a council house.
Her brain was a conversation about money
Sir Keith Joseph had with himself.
Her back passage was Basil Fawlty
complaining about car strikes to the Major.
The look in her eyes was a shoot to kill policy
in Northern Ireland.
Her sentimentality was a spinster’s thimble
in which you could fit what’s left of the Tory Party
in Scotland, Liverpool, Manchester,
Leeds, Sheffield, Newcastle…
Her clenched fist was a skinhead
in nothing but Union Jack y-fronts.
She said the word ‘Europe’
like a woman coming down
from a severe overdose of Brussels Sprouts.
Her Christmases were dinner at Chequers
with a recently deceased sex offender.
Her ‘out’, ‘no’, ‘never’
were striking print workers
being given the cat of nine tails.
Her fingers and thumbs
were ten riot shields in a row.
Her final nightmare
was the silent, black eyed ghosts
of Joe Green and David Jones ,
who did nothing but each offer her
a hand.
NOTES
David Gareth Jones, from Wakefield, died amid violent scenes outside Ollerton colliery in Nottinghamshire on 15 March 1984. On 15 June Joe Green was crushed to death by a lorry while picketing in Ferrybridge, West Yorkshire.
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