This Halloween, I shall dress as the year 2016
and emit a frightful, fulgent sheen
from my orange-pumpkin-Donald-Trumpkin head.

I shall adopt the gait of Theresa May’s Living Dead,
and howl like a slithy Gove under a waxy moon.
My chest will be scarred with Brexit wounds.

I shall visit all doorsteps across this haunted land
with a leer on my face and a beer in my hand,
like a phantasmal, sharp-fanged Nigel Farage.

A dagger will be sticking out of my back
(the Severed Hand of Boris will still be attached).
And there, trailing behind me, poor fools,

will be the ghosts of the heroes you’d pinned to your walls,
all those pop stars and comics and actors
who filled up your lives with music and laughter.

Alongside them will be the bombed and the drowned,
the beheaded, the starved, the blown-up, the gunned-down,
from American nightclubs to Syrian towns.

So Trick or Treat! Happy Halloween!
If you’re not in when I knock, no fear;
I’ll be here all year.