Month: October 2022

The Tory Diet

I’m on a Tory diet, counting out the beans,

the smallest cheapest loaf, a slice for the 

weans, biscuits to crunch, fill the tummy.

Now there’ll be no more, worst of fears,

they’ve shut the Food Bank, Oh! my dears,

they’ve served us for years, dried our tears.

——-

I’m on a Tory diet. Caviar and melba toast,

steak, potatoes, tomatoes, pork roast

choice of vegetables, an apple or pear,

washed down with wine from our cellar.

My children full and warm and dry.

Share with the poor? Not my pie.

———–

I’m on a Tory health plan, its mean,

I can’t afford soap to keep me clean,

I can’t afford shampoo or deodorant 

so I’ll smell and feel that I’m unclean.

My old clothes looser; now in mode,

walked head down in our lost road.

———-

I’m on a Tory health plan, and I’m seen,

latest hairdo and expensive creams,

I’ve a wide drawer of Chanel and teams

to wrap me after bathing in sea salt,

oxygen or mud, I shouldn’t ever halt

to avoid the rest who smell to a fault.

——-

I’m on a Tory diet, stay away from shops,

I’ve a pair of holed jeans, worn thin tops

The kids need trainers to go to school,

their coats have come from charity,

I wish the Tory party had honest clarity

cos my two need healthy food and parity.

——-

I’m on a Tory Diet, it’s been good to me.

I am a Tory backer and so glad to be,

they’ve given my money and so with glee,

I can buy what I want and pay no levy

cos I sent it to an island so cleverly.

——-

They took the hymn and cut it, 

it really wasn’t fair

to say the rich man in his castle,

the poor man at his gate

yet that’s the way the Tories want it

but it’s still not our fate.

—–

Jesus said we must change things

and see the poor are fed

but the Tory diet,

feeds their friends

while its the law it bends;

and blow the poor, the sick, the lame.

They can’t have a crumb 

they’re not the same.

How did we sink to this shame?

Enough!

Where in the foggy state of politics

is the misty figure whose job is – to

swarm over our crucial credibility?

Each step of disastrous politics,

each step of disastrous climate ,

each step of callous dealings

increasing the pace of poverty,

drives us further and distant 

from our path of democracy,

the common good and so they

laugh at those who think –

Enough!

—–

What do they gain who ply

their putrid trade of corruption?

Paying accountants who aren’t 

hesitant to open other pathways

to islands; whose economies rely

on those monies. And tax free

isles punish the poor  – who get

less and pay the bankers’ bonuses,

and the wages of those who spurn 

them hugging their hungry wallets;

No regretting! letting things stink!

and they laugh at those who think –

Enough!

—-

Who benefits when markets crash

as befits our failing tory fed land?

While people cry, children stumble

to school to chew their rubbers or

nibble on precious pencils, waiting 

for a basic lunch that is shrinking. 

What is this government thinking? 

Why punish hungry, skinny children? 

Why cruelly tether Universal Credit   

while blind, mindless leaders feast 

at banquets and leave them the least?

Enough

Autumn

Dappled light, Autumn angled plays over my path,

golden leaves litter the ground, crisp, crunching 

as I walk in the fading light, awed by nature’s 

bounteous praise of decaying foliage that has

striven to provide the plethora of berries that

call waxwings, thrushes, warblers and jays.

Squirrels come for the nuts that litter the 

colour hued leaves as they make a mosaic

to gladden my heart and ache for the skills

of an artist, who with brush and paint will

capture the moments that thrill with their 

skills, and as the guiding light fades, frosty 

breath flows and the harvest moon rises

to spread its silvery glow, greying the

paint box of fire capped bushes, which 

waved like flames in the bold, cold breeze.

Why Forgive?

I studied the news and the weather forecast

and felt my heart hurt with the pain and loss,

sought to make a prayer that thought of hope

and found it hollow, echoing in a vacuum.

—–

I looked in the bible for words to help me and

faltered over the words ‘love your enemy’, and

exhortation to forgive seventy times seven,

making me feel overwhelmed and faulty.

——

Putins there and Liz Truss, Trump and as ever

Bolsanaro, Xi-xiping, the misogynist Taliban, Iran 

writing a sentence of nothingness to the women

and girls that in God’s creation are equal to men.

——

Forgive them when they have caused such hurt,

forgive them when they deliberately celebrate

their lives and turn the screws on their subjects,

while holding to a devious plan, previously made

—–

to enslave, oppress, dehumanise and murder,

strengthening their bitter, stoney, cold hearts’ 

wills and some even say it is God’s work that

they are doing and opposition is of the devil.

——

Forgive them? Love them? Is to turn upside

down their view of humanity where each hold

grudges and fudges the line twixt good and bad.

It restores our humanity, lets go our acerbity.

———

They are still guilty, they are still to be pitied,

they are still amassing obscene wealth and

yet we are free of their machinations; as we

set our decisions in the ways Jesus taught

——

to walk on the side of the oppressed is to 

find God, and so we love and forgive letting

go our acid anger, and feed our souls on 

the love and goodness of a God who died,

—-

was denied, crucified, walks as our guide,

and when

the words don’t come 

prays at our side.

Love is:

He takes my hand so lovingly,

curling his fingers around mine,

as if t’were a treasure of great

price, and I hold his in mine

while memories of that first

fragile touch of nervousness.

====

Love can be worn thin like ice,

a place that snaps easily and

falling far through the fracture

often floundering and failing,

bitterly, unforgiving broken to

never surface in that place again.

====

Love can grow and be a place

of strength, and yet, struggles 

strain. But, shared as – we work

this out together  -can sprout

wonderlands of sweet moments,

forgiveness and grace grow love.

=

This is his love.

What if the Rain had not come?

What if the rain had not come

like Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia too

desertification, dying animals,

crying children, folk emaciated,

and still the silent sun shines on

drying, heating, carbon fuelled.

——

What if the rain had not come?

The reservoirs emptying still

and the cracks in the ground

widening and spreading like 

a pain of ball broken glass.

——

What would the farmers do?

Each of them grimly eying

rising dust from dying fields

of withering winter fodder

and apples in leafless orchards, 

so many, so small, stoney bitter. 

——

What would the government do

watching the golden corn die,

a poor harvest of little potatoes,

no strawberries for their tables

beef cattle dying on the farms,

struggling sheep in shipons?

——-

It will come. Will we be ready?

Irrigation ’n wells in our nation?

Or land turning into deserts in

waterless valleys, birdless hills

cos corporate greed wins again

destroying lives of those who 

have 

so 

little 

now.