THE ENEMY ARRIVES BY LIMOUSINE

I penned this tune last year thinking about yet another dingy full of desperate people tipping up in the freezing sea. The narrative we’re given is that these people are our enemies, yet it’s always seemed to me that they’re people like you and me and that our true adversaries are often the people we’re told to admire. I’d seen a placard on social media and jammed around, using the slogan and a few chords until I got a melody. Writing gives me a way to express and channel feelings of anger and powerlessness and to tell a story from a different perspective, often in direct contrast to what the telly is telling us. Sometimes the songs come out as satire and comedy, other times a bit melancholy and bleak. This one is in minor chords and has a gruffness which suits the story.

The enemy doesn’t come in a small flimsy boat

Cast out to sea by a godless cut-throat

Nor do they travel in an airless container

Stuffed in a truck by the eternal jailer

The enemy rolls up in a limousine

Looking all slick but we know the mother****er’s mean

Rotten to the core, making its way out

Crushing all the desperate souls wandering about

Ain’t it time we dropped the pretence

The bad guys don’t climb no barbed wire fence

On the border, with pain and disorder

The desolate stand, ashamed, getting colder

The enemy rolls up in a limousine,

Looking all slick but we know the mother****er’s mean

Rotten to the core, making its way out

Crushing all the desperate souls wandering about

So let’s remember through our festive December

That all’s not as it seems, there’s a well versed agenda

To keep us separate, to hush us, make us choke

Making sure we don’t get up and follow hope

The enemy rolls up in a limousine

Looking all slick but we know the mother****er’s mean

Rotten to the core, making its way out

Crushing all the desperate souls wandering about

Martin King