Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson

May his wisdom increase and his girth decrease

Was born his mother’s and his father’s son

With characteristics, some hers and others his.

Neither could claim monsterhood or ogreship

If the boy had ambition in that direction

He’d better learn how to steer his own ship

And not wreck it on the rocks of salvation.

He taught himself to tell lies at a young age

To stick his snot on doors walls and windows

To spit in father Stanley’s beverage

And piss on mummy’s broad beans and marrows

But aged ten he was no more…

It took two millennia for Nero

To go from zero to hero

The simple truth is that history

Is writ by whoever won victory

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Vespasian drove Nero to suicide

That, historians have not denied

So he painted him in a bad light

Making Romans think he was all right

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When Rome burnt Nero was out of town

So he could not have been around

Therefore not guilty of the fiddling

Charge that his enemies have been peddling

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When the fire finally died out

There was much misery about

And Nero’s efforts were tireless

To comfort and rehouse…

Now that Nero has been rehabilitated, we need a new name to head the league table of villains. I propose Fulgencio Batista president of Cuba before Castro ousted him.It would be interesting for others to nominate their candidate.

The obvious ones, Hitler, Pol Pot, Donald Trump, Genghis Khan, King Leopold of Belgium etc, whatever their crimes, had an agenda, often a warped one, purporting to benefit their country, albeit at the expense of others, and millions of lives. Fulgencio had no such agenda. Cuba was there for him to exploit, to sell to the American mafia, to enrich himself, fuck…

If books were solely judged by their covers

The easisest thing to say about Kim Jong-Oon

Would be that however much he endeavours

He’ll ne’er be anything but a grotesque buffoon.

He might have learnt to rule from Il’s lessons

As a dedicated son and grandson

But his hair style he copied from Stan Laurel’s

Dressed in the shape of a truncated barrel’s.

If grandad and dad sent dissidents to camps

And oft spilled their blood and put out their lamps

There is no record of either of them when alive

Doing the same to their own blood relatives,

But…

Although Kim Il Sung was declared eternal

A living god, his body was not immortal

And the time came to shuffle his mortal coils

Leaving the country in chaos and turmoil.

He had named his healthy son Kim Jong Il

As his successor to rule the land in his will.

He had earned his stripes at Propaganda

A massive task with the clear agenda

Of telling the nation how lucky they were

To be living in socialist Northern Korea

Telling being different from showing

Made his task hell-hard and harrowing

Telling the North than they need not envy the south

…

Kim Il Sung the father of North Korea

Grew up when the Korean peninsula

Was under Imperial Japan’s occupation

And later would write of how his heart bled

At the sight of so much Korean blood being shed

Which was what pushed him to the helm of his nation.

He might well have thought that he did not need

Outside help to make his nation bleed.

With the Japanese defeated he took the reins

Of power promising to spare no pains

To drive away anti-communist Syngman Rhee

And reclaim the southern half of the country.

While the regime in the…

When Bashar Al Assad’d dad Hafez al Assad

Died, possible heirs having faced the firing squad

He was the unanimous choice for president

Hafez ne’er had time for opinions dissident

Of the lion in his name he thought nobility

A luxury using only blood lust and cruelty

The few who stuck their heads above the parapet

Received a quick visit from the Mukhabaret

And were thereafter never seen and heard no more

Folks hoped that Bashar would stick to the rule of law

Assad Père did not believe in negotiation

To him the slightest dissent was provocation

If one man…