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Greasing the Maypole 
Mayday 2001

Come workers, come witches
Come socialists, come elves
Come wizards, come peasants
& break your sleepy spells

Yes! Arise ye from your covens & squats & slumbers
in unvanquishable numbers
& greet the May morn

Come communists, come shamen
High priestesses & worker priests
Come alchemists & anarchists
& join in May Day’s feast

Hecate call Emma Goldman
Vanzetti call on Pan
Woman call Woman
Man call Man

Ye Haymarket martyrs
& oak-rooted satyrs
Ye rank & file goddesses
& divine shop stewardesses
Come marry your colours & dreams

Let red & black fly from the green Maypole heights
Let riots of wild flowers spread like wildcat strikes

Yes, come all ye Wiccan-syndicalists & eco-agitators
Ye anti-fascist faeries & allotment propagators
Plant those Beltane barricades of hawthorn & yew
& in the seasoned pagan cauldron cook an anarchist stew

Come all ye soviet astrologers & pantheistic punks
Ye cannabis conspirators & anarcho-Bacchanalian drunks
Come all ye pacifist pixies & direct action druids
Celebrate your fluid bodies & all your bodily fluids

Come ye all
& let whatever is
tight
in your ideology or psychology or theology or pantheology
be gently loosened by the rhythms of the earth

for a pleasure to one is a pleasure to all

Yes! Down with the bosses & up with the sun
Phone in well
& clock in for fun
“If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution,” the fiery Emma said
& the cleverest cops are often those ones patrolling inside our heads

So raise your embroidered banners & drop your underwear
& show your arses to the ruling classes & have no care
for tomorrow
for Mother Earth will carry you
& knows a thing or two or three about revolutions

Yeah, come workers & come witches
Come revolutionaries, come elves
Come anti-warlocks & anti-warriors
& snap out of your sleepy spells

Oh, arise ye from your covens & squats & permaculture plots
in unvanquishable
& deliciously banquetable numbers
& greet the fair, sweet, budding & bursting
& horny May morn



Picture
   © Stephen Hancock 2020                                                                                                                                                                 Energy is Eternal Delight