Corporal Punishment

Corporal Punishment.

“A clip round the ear never did me any harm.” Said the man getting drunk at the bar.
Discipline, not love, is society’s progression.

He said he’d been a soldier as he stood, anchored in his anger and drowning in his guilt.
Holding court for anyone who would listen.

Joined up to make himself a man, not a kind man, no time for mankind.
A hard man A hard drinking man, not a hard thinking man.

Never took a wife, was a soldier all his life and now believes the state should take a life, for minor misdemeanors.

He tells us where he’s fought, whilst drunk and holding court, with anyone who’ll give him their attention.

And all the fun he’s had, whilst drinking with the lads, in the good old days, before they went their separate ways.

Deserted, but not by deserters.

The army life had rules that they never taught in schools and only a select few could understand.
The theatre of war is what he’s longing for, feels safer with his hand grenades on hand.

Bewildered by the very thing he fought for ………… Freedom.

Corporal punishment and his crew not concerned with the view of anybody getting in their way.
Together drinking beer “ Lock your daughters up, we’re here” and we’re gonna love you only for a day.

“Educating and dominating savages”.

He says “You should be scared of me, after I’ve had two or three, I’ll fight you!”
Then go and deal with my own sorry reality, because “Society’s too complex to be free”

The army taught him everything he knows but on civvy street, he’s beat.
Just wandering the street. A competent combatant merely killing time.
Intellectual snipers keep him in their firing line.
.
“ Hang 'em, beat' em, flog 'em then put' em in a cell and never let them loose or slip 'em in a noose.

I guess you had to be there.

Let conflict be a lesson to us all, turn your eyes towards the wall and never question what you're told,
He fought to keep us free, fought for our equality.
Was more than willing to take the KIng’s shilling, but does not see the irony.

                                         
Then one day a year, he’s called up to revere the cenotaph where forsaken souls still dwell.
To lay a wreath upon the floor and to celebrate once more past battle scars and present living hell.

Corporal punishment is the antidote to all society’s woes.

They march along as one, till the barrage of the gun, sends cannon fodder rushing to the fore.
Born a fighting man, he does n’t understand the inequality of freedom and of war.

But we will remember them.

When the poor take up their guns and rich folk start to run and barricade themselves in mansions and in cellars
While he’s busy dodging shells, the higher order swells, forget him and look down on impotent killers.

Because the poor should be resigned to growing old

He will march and salute in his finest Sunday suit, the bourgeois people handing down his fate.
They gather up  his thoughts till all that he’s been taught is to look smart and never to  be late.

Too rich to send their sons to die.

After trumpets have been blown, he’ll go back to his home and wonder why he struggles to fit in’
Because the values at his core are only meant for war, where taking life is not considered sin,

Being camouflaged is not the same as being a social chameleon