Bad Guy (Poetry)

Do they know who they burn ?
This effigy that lolls atop
the smoking pyre shows no concern
for history. Limbs flop -

no proud Catholic here -
a forlorn figure, clownish, slack,
but resurrected year by year,
his soul imagined black -

deserving of Hell's flames.
While, quiet, his fellow plotters lie
forgotten: everybody blames
this infamous, bad guy.

Custom's queer, ghoulish rite
creates rag voodoo dolls that claim
identity on Bonfire Night -
evoke a long-dead name.

Besides, who cares to know,
and who, among them, ever learnt
(it was so very long ago)
that Fawkes was hanged, not burnt.

Small children clap and cheer;
cloth ignites and flames climb higher;
they watch his body disappear,
consumed by righteous fire.

November's air is shot
with gunpowder's sharp irony -
the firework's fizz recalls the plot,
the smell of treachery

still bitter as the need
to punish that most heinous crime,
adopt tradition's pagan creed
and kill him one more time.