Plague Songs - Sounds of the Seventies / by Rich Hobbs

Stumbling out of Lockdown

Like a 70s British porn star

Falling shackled from the wardrobe,

Streaky y-fronts round your ankles,

When her old man comes home early

    because the abattoir’s closed down.

Opening up the schools

Like the janitor in “Please Sir!”,

Kids’ heads caught in the railings

And bodging up the carpentry

With make-do-and-mendy comedy

    and jokes about The War

Tackling systemic racism

Like a blacked-up back row chorus boy

In The Black And White Minstrel Show

As seen on prime time telly, and

Now headlining the Summer Show

    down the pier in endless rain.

Strategising everything,

A genius wearing tracksuit pants,

Dressing up like Jimmy Saville

In standard-issue rapist wear

And fixing it and fucking it

all up with a sneer.

Crumbling a curly-wurly

Into his bowl of Special K,

Benny-Hilling “Oo-er Missus!

It’s getting really close in here!”

He slops in slugs of Rohypnol 

to forget the stench of death.