You have let down at last your lovely hair
From the locked room
High in the dark tower
And Death has clambered up
To break open the shackles
The pinky shackles that match your hat
The iron shackles of duty you have worn
Since you were a wee lassie
And Death has freed you
Like Samson chained in the Temple
Given by Death the strength to die
Between twin pillars Church and State –
Or like Andromeda chained to the throne rock
Our sacrifice, we offered you up
To propitiate the sea monster dragon –
Released by Perseus Death –
But wait,
Were you not also the Dragon itself
Coiled upon your immense ill-gotten horde
Thy choicest gifts in store
Fouling the treasure with your exudations,
Were you not the Eye of the Dragon
The ever-open watchful keen one
Jealous of all the sundries
Who would plunder your booty
And loot their inheritance back?
Oh Lizard Queen
Return to your people beneath the earth
Victorious
Oh Queen Mab
Holding your tiny court in my CPAP palace
And every night you’d ride
Your unimaginable chariot
Along the pipe and up my nose
To sprinkle your coruscating fancies
Upon my oyster brain.
But now go tell the bees
You’ve left me for your Hellboy lover
Oh Borg Queen
Assimilation complete
Oh Glorious Boadicea
Battle-scarred Britannia
Defending our laws
Hmmm….
Oh Acid Queen
Don’t remember much about you
Your Silver Jubilee
Whoa ….. silver, man,
Rainbow vampires and unicorns
With alablaster teeth
Late nights scoring in Soho
Bad boys in London Town
Punks along the King’s Road
Biba’s closing sale, IRA bombs,
Heavy
Oh Drag Queen
You go girl
In your colours
Of Dayglo Yellow
Like a field of rape in the sunshine
Of Lilac to Mauve
Like a gully choked with Paterson’s Curse
Of Minty Green
Like a bastard man in white
In an outfit by Leigh Bowery
In a portrait by Rolf Harris
You go, bee atch
Oh Bandit Queen
Taking from the rich
Or something something
Cavorting in your highland fastness
With your band of men in garters,
(I stand confounded)
Merry no longer
Oh Virgin Queen
More chaste than any nun
Object of the impious lusts
Of all the men from Cowes to Venus Bay
But I, only I, know of whom you think
When you close your eyes
For I can see inside your head
Oh Gypsy Queen
Your mad majestic tarantella is done.
Hang up your tambourine
And leave your golden earrings
To the Archbishop of Canterbury
Old Mrs Batchelard
My razor strop toting Grade 5 teacher
Made me write “Noblesse Oblige”
One hundred times on the blackboard
A proto-upper-middle-class Bart.
That was my Quasimodo year
Ringing in the changes in the old bell tower.
The old Battleaxe didn’t tell me what it meant
But you did Queenie, in Spades
When I was a child
You were ever there
A superhero alter ego of my mother
With dominion over all the seas and lands
From the frozen wastes of the North-west Passage
To the sweltering jungles in the dark heart of Africa
And with the power of Corgi speech
Over the Christmas airwaves
Your orb her dinner bell
Your sceptre her wooden spoon
Your crown her Sunday bonnet
Like you she had four bairns
The well-beloved first born,
The sporty one, the posh one,
The brainy one, the naughty one,
The butch one, the girlie one,
The favourite one (it was I)
The senior management one,
The poppinjay, the doormat,
The martinet, the clothes horse,
The flibbertigibbet , the dolt,
And the one who ran away
To join the poetry circus
She was stern but loving
And though she loved us all equally
I knew she loved me best
Now she is gone and so are you,
Oh Pearly Queen, Oh Queen of the May.
Truly orphaned, motherless,
Abandoned in the forest
I must thrive
