Say no to the televised 'Evil Games'

I will support any legal disruption of the London Olympic Games that I hear about – such as the trade union Unite’s recently announced intentions.

But my reasons are nothing to do with the undoubted economic hardships many of us – not just trade unions – are facing.

No. I object because the Olympic Games – with their foul record of corruption, drug abuse, nationalism, physical narcissism, PR whoring and capitalist sponsorship – are evil.

My poem, below, shows how I feel about this issue …

THE EVIL GAMES

‘Citius, Altius, Fortius.’ *
It’s really most unfortunate
when athletic masturbation
reaches its biennial climax
and fools at full-tilt seek
spurious sporting windmills.

Each man and woman
and in-betweeny
wants to be seen here.
It’s what they’re all about –
moving ‘swifter, higher, stronger’
than the next man or woman
or hermaphrodite chancer
or drug-raddled body enhancer.

It’s the arena of small ambition
that reduces the human condition
to physical exhibition.
The phrase ‘disgusting displays’
was tailor-made
for these Olympian days.

Tarnished gold
is the tarts’ grubby target,
above all else,
above all else.
Swifter,
higher,
stronger,
sadder,
more desperate than ever.

Come on! COME on!
Peel of the Lycra suits.
The drugs don’t work.
They just make it worse.

Too late! Too late!
They have to take part.
If they didn’t they’d fall apart -
so poor and incomplete
has been their human formation.

They’re corrupted,
like the Olympics itself,
by being about
winning instead of the
important stuff of life,
which is mainly about losing.

On the podium they stand,
grinning like go-getters,
facile pace-setters.
Some people cheer.
Some wave the bunting
of freedom-crushing states
as athletes are rewarded
with the motherland’s
rancid anthem.

And nothing now can redeem
a movement professing to be noble,
while doing what the ignoble
always do – by crushing the
humanity, humility,
poetry and eloquence
right out of people.

‘Citius, Altius, Fortius’ (Latin for Swifter, Higher, Stronger)
Is the fascistic motto of the Olympics.