The greasy oil barons and the greedy gas companies
making dirty electricity that’s priced beyond reach.
Like a sucking leech on the poor: they drain them
of their last coins to maintain hidden pots of gold,
and like beady eyed predators they watch and grin
then spend their ill gained lolly on another new sin.
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?
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
Blue eyes sunk in a worried face,
dim with the ache of hunger,
closing to hide the horror of
cruelty in power and control.
——
Brown ones too in the faces
of children understanding
that they are voiceless and
that loving adults voted for
—–
this annihilation, bold policies
that take their food, warmth,
their schools, jobs and hope
and create fat cats, and pigs
—–
that grunt and snuffle in the
decaying detritus of their
lost lives, painting with
their blood an enthralling
—–
idyllic picture of a trickling
stream of quickening money
but block it, subvert it, to sell
the oppressed for a fevered
—-
obsession with giving money,
and more money, and misery
money, for fancy, future jobs
to their backers and bankers;
——-
who invite them to parties where
the poor are absent, the climate
crisis is chalked over and the
opposition groans and fights
——-
each other, while the despot
in Number 10 has easy days,
creating her queenly kingdom
where only the elite live well.
Sewage on our beaches
government beyond our reaches,
history did not teach us
and now they cling like leeches,
—-
feeding off the poor,
slamming shut the door,
hunger comes with a roar
and they say they’re sticking to the law.
—
Crisis costs will rise,
Will they hear the dying sighs?
Will they finally raise their eyes?
And free them from wealthy ties.
—-
Money goes into their coffers,
and kindness will make offers
of tins, beans, tea against the scoffers
and cars driven by chauffeurs.
—–
Shivering inside from all ills,
chemist can’t get the right pills.
Climate crisis worsens and kills.
Who can save us from their selfish wills?
Gaunt faces, Belsen like, shivering in Oxam coats
and parcels of food in Red Cross Boxes,
schools struggling to open, free dinners lost
and hospitals stretched, homes wrecked and
breaking, while the MPs and corporations
sit
counting their profits and refusing to see
the results of rabid greed and sleep easy
in their clean warm beds.
Its a war on words and ideas that are just,
they make a pact and renegade on the fact
that you agreed their wielded written word’s;
scorn you and laugh at your confusion and plot
your demise, descending hope falls broken,
and to cope is through tears, heartbreak
and blood shed on your doorstep.
——-
Armies muster their support with guns,
governments insist on their inalienable
rights over your right to free speech, and
the freedom to care for your famished
family, by pushing up profits for profiteers
and making your income shrink as the
companies raise prices but pay petty tax.
——
There is a whisper that things might be
improving, so that we accept their disdain
and even tolerate their lie infested talk,
We walk an ever decreasing circle of
fascist dictatorships and the liberal loss
of our democracies, having ignored
the prophets with their scary prophecies.
Generations crippled and controlled,
controversially, cruel governments
count the dead and silence the poor;
while the elite count their moneys
and parade themselves fortuitously
in roles designating fearful fascism.
Comprehensibly overtaking press and
media manipulating and monitoring
until the oppressed seek redress.
——
Painfully the demonstrating populace,
face the potential ruinous choice of
punishment,
to uphold hope in a vote,
to definitely restore a determined
democracy, replacing the right wing
ruling by a good people; prevailing
and working for the common good.
Holy Monday
It was riddled with corruption and guilt,
that temple in Jerusalem,
No one could come and feel beloved
excepting the moneyed leadership.
—–
The tables were out and wares bought,
in that holy courtyard,
In poverty they came where exploitation
capitalised on the hungry poor.
—–
Pitiful returns on money exchanged,
and the costs of doves were high,
seeking redemption they paid it all,
to appease the law.
—-
He walked in and saw the oppression,
in a place that was holy,
he felt their pain, saw the cheating
and stood for truth that day.
—–
He overset the tables, loosed the doves
in his rage at the injustice.
Breathing hard he spoke the word –
this is a place of prayer.
—–
The temple curtain trembled and shook,
while people flocked to see,
the gentle, healing man, zealous for action
fighting for grace and love.
——
The stones in the courtyard,
besmeared and trodden,
looked up and praised
that awesome judgement.
——
The great blocks of stone, in
the sturdy temple walls,
shouted for equality and opportunity
to be shared for all.
——
The dust settled, shock waves at peace,
he looked up and wept for the many
who always die contributing to
corruption and coercion.
He looked into his wallet and then into the face of his children.
Oliver looked out from their faces, thinned and paled by hunger,
Their sad eyes looked at under woolly hats and coat covered arm hugs.
—
His eyes watered and his empty belly grumbled as he opened
the last dull can of beans, cut the crust of curling bread into two,
watched the food disappear into hungry mouths opened like nesting chicks.
Not far away, plates were full with succulent salmon, rare steak,
beef, chicken vegetables, fried potatoes and mashed spuds, followed
by golden custard, french named cakes, apple pies and salted chocolate ices.
—-
Somewhere a mother scraped small crumbs from her sons bowl, sucking
them from the poor plastic spoon. In her head imagining the eggs tomorrow,
when the reduced Universal credit arrived, a meal, heat, then rancid bin search.
Not far away, a kitchen door ajar, while out of date food is thrown away,
in the waste; while far away, the icy hearted are having a party at number 10,
half eaten rich food slipped in a bin. They take from the poor to give to the rich.
—-
Clean, loved children crying themselves to sleep, hunger gnawing at their vitals,
holding onto the hope for tomorrow they’d be in heaven, food galore at the FoodBank,
bringing home food in plenty to be eked slowly to cover the schoolless, foodless weeks.
Miles away lives a callous rich man who can choose to give them enough or kill
them slowly by starvation and a rich woman minister who chooses to treat them as
alien pariahs, ignores the council of the wise, ignores deadly hunger, abuse and trafficking.
—–
Truth may come, but already the lies hold sway, the government culled the media.
So, how will the hungry children have their voices heard? The starving, the weakened
the oppressed, hidden from sight, are crying out, lost in the lies trumpeted out by Tory press.
======
Yes, minister, the numbers in poverty are atrocious
but we are doing what we can, watch us.
We’ve paid the rich and they are wealthy too.
Tis tricky, the trickle down effect?
‘It won’t.’ A lie from long ago.
The poor are always with us – but they
don’t
donate
to
our
party.