SURVEILLANCE

A police helicopter hovers above

my house, flailing the air, its thrumming

outlawing conversation, even thought.

Perhaps they are observing the druggies, dealers,

who gather round the BT kiosk

by the nearby park, and then scatter,

like the Vietcong, when they hear the rotors.

The police will have my scowling mugshot –

as I glare upwards at this wasteful,

pointless, harassing jolly at my expense –

to add to all those other dissenting acts

recorded against my name at NSA

and GCHQ: for example,

supporting the ANC while apartheid ruled,

and now tagging ‘Cuba’, the war on terror’,

‘drones’, ‘Waziristan’ in my posted poems.

Why be surprised? If we employ spies,

to justify their pay they will find secrets,

which, by definition, are meant to be

private but which are not, per se, wrong.

While metadata clouds in the outskirts

of Cheltenham – costing so much money,

employing so much talent – thousands

of people, elderly like me but poor,

die each year of hypothermia

unregarded.