Just stood on a stage and read this at the Devizes Festival Poetry Slam…

You’re a Tin Pot Dictator, you’re Kim Jong Un

Blasting me to pieces with an anti-aircraft gun

For momentary guard slip and forgetting of pretence

Public execution for your Minister of Defence

*******

There were less dramatic options, like demotion and sacking

Not as entertaining, mind, as death by ack acking

As for that piss take poster in the Ealing barber’s shop

You’d show them a Bad Hair Day with a more severe crop

*******

You’re a Tin Pot Dictator, you’re that bloke Pol Pot

Who tried to turn the clock back to Year Zero, or Dot

It must have been torture, being rubbish at school

So you got rid of all the clever ones that made you feel a fool

*******

Clad with a well cut uniform and medals on your chest

A gun, a throne and megaphone you’re better than the rest

Making up for all those failings that you feel so acutely

Power that tendeth to corrupt, in you corrupteth absolutely

*******

You’re a Tin Pot Dictator, going by the name of Vlad

As in Lenin and Putin and that weird Impaler lad

You’re Saddam Hussein and you’re Ho Chi Minh

Declare resistance to be futile and dissent a sin

*******

Flatter your enemies lest they stab you in the back

Equip the walls with ears to hear what loyalty you lack

Hide the Stasi in the khasi to hear the shit go down

Watch for subtle facial movements like the nuance of a frown

*******

You’re a Tin Pot Dictator, but Godwins Law states

That the first to mention Hitler loses rational debates

From bad art and rejection came forth carnage we presume

Stick a moustache on the elephant in the middle of the room

*******

Rally troops remaining, keep the enemy at the gate

For there just might be a coup and it just might be too late

There are movements in the corners of the bunker in your mind

Where one eye is always open in the kingdom of the blind

*******

You’re a Tin Pot Dictator, mowing down the picket

You’re the warden who gave a crate of vegetables a ticket

Pass the tar and feathers if I ever call you Mate

I am the voice of decompression in a Tin Pot State

by Gail