This is all about passion
Passion is what life’s about
If you listen
To the men in suits.
They say you have to be passionate to get things done
Or get elected - or get power - or get your way.
Maybe that’s why the prime minister believes
Passionately
In everything he does, or thinks or says, and tells lies about
Even though what he does and thinks and says and tells lies about
Depends on who he had dinner with last night
Or on whatever flows in on the Atlantic drift from Washington.

(In the White House, presidents squat in legislative litter
Meting unequal laws to savages who live in hell
And willing to believe whatever comes to hand and mind
So long as there’s money in it, preferably an oil well.)

Passion can take people a long way,
Especially if they feel  passionately that
The world would be a better place
Without Jews - like Nazis, rednecks, fascists - you know the kind;
Without Jesus - Jews don’t like him overmuch;
Without Muslims: more than a few Christians would cheer - maybe Hindus too;
Without Blacks - that’s the Klu Klux Klan, the BNP, Spanish soccer fans;
Without Heretics - the Inquisition, Calvin, Popes passim, and people who’ve seen the light
Without Rivals - Pol Pot, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Sadam Hussein, Macbeth, Satan and... the list is long so add your own;
Without you and me as well - because we’re sure to be in somebody’s way.
According to the Good Book, by the way,
God’s as passionate as anybody
Jealous as hell too - if you’ll pardon the solecism -
And keen on vengeance.
That’s why,
It’s okay to burn people, blow them up, bomb them,  torture and butcher them,
So long as we do it in His name.
Passionately.
We’re only doing our best to make the world
A better place.

(Passion leads politicians to promises they can’t deliver
To a taste for millennial resolutions and for ruling  with an iron hand
Truth is we’d all be safer to elect a cynic
But what self-respecting cynic would agree to stand?)

Personally I don’t take too much to passion
Except maybe in the bedroom;
And even there,
It can be downright depressing.

London 2005