I have had insomnia for a while and seem to fall asleep in a peculiar way at almost getting up time. I start to dream before I realise I’m falling asleep and keep startling awake with the peculiar visions. This vision of a young middle class reporter I describe below was one of these dreams.
When falling into the abyss
Into morning's fretful sleep,
Adrenaline while coursing through
Brings pictures, fractions of a dream,
Which panic, startle, stir,
They're short and sudden but yet deep:
I see before me some young miss,
Behind her is some war torn view.
Well educated, middle class,
She speaks to camera, some stream
Of sorry hope, ambition dashed,
She braves it out and does not weep,
She feels she's failed the sisterhood.
She's speaking from some neighbourhood
Where women are not free, like her,
But hidden, bullied and oppressed.
Her style is elegant, she's thin,
Her hair is gold, likewise her skin,
She's taken care as she has dressed.
She seems to represent the best
Of all the values of the west,
And yet, though genuine her sorrow,
Is not really what it seems,
She's facing up to real extremes,
And knows the fight that starts tomorrow,
Makes her own pet cause seem shallow.
That's the bit that's hard to swallow,
Knowing 'Western patriarchy'
With its bombs and guns was needed
To impose her girlish vision,
Of a world without division
Where bright hens would rule the roost,
A bossy, pecking matriarchy.
If only 'our boys' had succeeded,
Good old Yanks and loyal British
Not the stone age, vile and brutish,
Not that she could quite admit,
That she was such a hypocrite,
Oh, the fuck she would not give!
While cheering modern Western man,
And sneering at the Taliban
For foreign culture she'd protect
In theory, anyway, object
To thickos, such as me,
Who drew attention to the flaws
Of letting sects among us live,
By different values, different laws.
For foreign brutes are welcome here,
It's us who ought to disappear,
It's only in their native land
Where we should have the upper hand.
