.
Ruling Out The
Equaliser
Tinpot dictator? Capable enough to snuff out
the Thatcher brat’s attempted coup,
to woo a Swiss dictator who understands
the need for PR stunts
like this award of half a Cup of Nations
to a microstate where oil flows like blood.
Face is all, money
the make-up to salvage it.
From his second-best
purse, the dictator’s son
empties a year’s
earnings of half the population
at the feet of the
“National Lightning”,
151st
best team in our world.
Opponents, like
officials, calculate their due,
and duly act as
though they’ve got it.
Lightning strikes
Libya and Senegal
from the path to
glory,
before
orange-shirted “Elephants”
trample the
usurpers,
restore a semblance
of merit
to the spectacle,
which no-one watches
live.
The circus moves on.
South Africa next.
The world’s
attention floodlights fail.
A shroud once more
encases
Equatorial
Guinea’s heart of
darkness.
What happens now?
History regurgitates.
Oil powers the
wheels of bulldozers,
clearing shanties
for developers,
not for the souls
who live there.
Migrants get
harassed by bribe-sucking cops
with inflated
stop-and-search concessions.
Students are
acquainted with jails,
the continent’s
worst, lest they protest
when summit-bound
dignitaries
come from afar, some
months hence.
A news blackout
leaves the rest
to our
imagination.
The sport itself
still searches
among warehouses
full of its gold
for the beauty it
has sloughed:
cynical, corrupt,
creeping
every day closer to
the apex of its hubris,
every moment more
akin to Equatorial
Guinea.
Bio:
Bryan Murphy is a newly retired translator who now
concentrates on writing his own words. His work has recently appeared in The
Camel Saloon, Indigo Rising, Dead Snakes, The Eunoia Review, The Rainbow Rose
and The Pygmy Giant. He used to believe that soccer could be a vehicle for human
rights by fostering inter-cultural contact and respect, and, through its
simplicity and ubiquity, creating a level playing field - the
equaliser.
(author retains copyright)
