The Tragedy of the Commons

Anna  Montgomery, guest contributor at the Poet’s Pub gives us an interesting look at neologisms, colloquial language and nonsense words, requiring a poem incorporating any or all three.  I apologise for re-posting a poem I wrote a couple of years ago at the height of the outrageous revelations about Members of Parliament getting on the gravy train, while ordinary folk were tightening their belts and losing their jobs and homes.   The following year, the Government was voted out, but the gravy train still seems to be on the rails.

The poem launches a neologism born originally from a friend’s typo: mundulation/  and I’m trying to get it into the Oxford English Dictionary, so please feel free to use it! 

The Tragedy of the Commons 

The world has gone to pot.
With mundulating, globalizing
boom and bust, we’ve overshot
all decency.

Destabilizing politicians
writhe ignobly in the glare
of discovery,
admitting inanity in the hope of recovery,
unaware of the wrath that greets their cupidity.

The futility of trying to find some validity,
they squirm and wriggle
‘sorrying’ lamely
as hacks dig more dirt, exposing it gamely. 

‘Obeying the rules’ they say,
looking like fools, they
fall over themselves to repent
and recant.
‘Accounting inadequacy’ they explain with complacency.

But we’ll have the last laugh,
we have  power to depose them,
unseat and prevent them
repeating their sins.
Two thousand and ten is the year
for revenge.

Mundulation:  a word coined and defined by Harry Nicholson at http://1513fusion.wordpress.com/

     a) Obsolescent: the growth and decay of systems, as in worlds, empires and religions
     b) now in vulgar use for anything that writhes in a confused manner
     c) casting about for excuses
     d) Recently (2009) In a defamatory sense:  allusion to explanations of MPs’ expenses
              claims.  From Latin, mundus: world, and Latin undulant: wave like, rising and
              falling.