Here is my live performance of my poems ‘Am I a Poet?’ and ‘Working Tax Credit’, at Away With Words open mic night, November 21st, Off the Road Live Lounge, Hull.
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Britain’s Breadline Kids
Britain’s Breadline Kids
We are breeding the next generation
Of Britain’s breadline kids.
Kids who have nothing but low expectations
Kids who know no, they know low, they know how low life goes
They know they are the empty at the bottom of their piggybank
They know they are the broken Barbie with butchered hair
They know they are the Aldi Rich Tea biscuit, not the McVities Digestive
They know
They know
Breadline kids
Eating from the shelves of the local foodbank
Cupboards as bare as the aisles in the shops of Chernobyl
Fridges only cold for the splash of milk that kisses the coffee
That tempers the mum
That needs the caffeine
That keeps away the deadening grey, the grey that sucks the life out of her day
That keeps that last bit of death away
A coffee and let’s pray.
Let’s pray.
Breadline kids
Huddled in dirty quilts and sleeping in duvets of charity coats
No money for heating, no money for gas, no pennies for leccy
The kids they like Frozen, they dream of the Movie
And they fantasise that life’s an adventure
In the lands of Olaf and Elsa
and that they don’t cry like newborns in the night
when Jack Frost’s tapping at that icy window
and blue is the colour of their cyanosis lips
and not just the politics that put them here.
Breadline kids
Fun is something that always comes free
No x box, no laptop, no new fangled gadgets
Nothing of value exists in their homes bar the value of love
And of family
And that’s running thin
With the stress and the strain and the strife and the pain
And the pain and the pain and the pain.
And what can we give you today Cash Convertors?
Will you perhaps take my soul that’s a huge aching hole
If I sold you my children would I still get parole
You know everything on your shelves
Has paid for empty stomachs and breadline birthdays
And maybe the odd line of coke.
Maybe the odd beer and extravagant smoke.
Breadline Kids
We have no decadent parties here
Don’t flaunt your fancy balloons or your pink tutu skirts
Or your partybags filled with cheap plastic tat
Or your musical statues or pass the parcels
For the only parcels we have here are the foodbank variety
And the only musical statues are our poor, broken bodies
Stiff with the curse of a freezing winter’s morning.
Save your parties for the piss poor politics
And remember that blue is the colour
of impoverished lips, lying Tories and capitalism.
Breadline kids
You have always been here.
With your castoffs and hunger, your bravery and sadness
But in an era when people become millionaires from posting shit on YouTube
And celebrities are liabilities and the famous are talentless
And the government say Universal Credit is a success
As the Prime Minister’s wife sports her Gucci dress
And our politics are fucked like a cancerous abscess
You should be kids
Not casualties.
Kids.
©2019 Sarah Drury
Farewell Innocence
I am a child
And innocence
Innocence you owed me nothing.
When you held up your weapon.
Aimed
Straight
Into the heart of
My sinlessness
BANG!
Straight
into the heart of
My righteousness
BANG!
Straight
into the heart of
My guiltlessness
BANG!
Straight
into the heart of
My blamelessness.
BANG!
Straight into
MY HEART!
My heart bleeds
With the remorseful blood
Of my sins
My heart bleeds
Sins?
If it is a sin to be a victim
Then
I will perish
In the burning vaults of Hell
Although I am there
And I am burnt
And the devil had a kinder demeanor
Than the hallowed nuns and priests
Purveyors of misery
Since God gave them power
Over the voiceless innocents.
I will be defiled
At the hands of those
Who cup my sanguine little heart
In hands gnarled with the falsehood
Of celebrity faces
Parading their goodness
On the silver screen
Dipping toes into
In forbidden oceans
Possessing innocence
Like an evil spirit
Possesses a holy child.
Aim again at my head
BANG!
Digital technology
Leaves me for dead
See him, grooming so sweetly?
He asked me ‘How old?’
I told him ‘Old enough’
He told me
‘over 13’s not welcome’
‘and do you have any interested friends?’
The curse of Facebook
And Snapchat
And Whatsapp
And Instagram
As age is not a truth
And you’re only as old
As the filter on your selfie.
I am a child
And innocence
You owed me everything.
In a day that playing in the streets
Is a travesty
As hungry eyes
Sick with the affliction
Of deviant sexuality
Scrutinize the imagined suitability
Of a pure heart innocent
Cerebrally laid at the altar
Of an act so despicable
BANG!
I turn the weapon
I aim it at your twisted head
For all I despise your sickness
And the fact that
I cannot live in a world
Where I am safe
I am loved
And am not a victim
Of sexual perversion
I cannot kill you
Because you are a God
In this monopoly
Of this sick society
In which we so sadly
Live.
You live.
YOU live.
I die.
I
DIE!
BANG!
© Sarah Drury 2019
Taking away my working tax credits
Working tax credit
My working tax credit, my working tax credit
They’re taking away my working tax credit!
They say I am working, that I am a poet
That poetry pays well and don’t they just know it.
I‘m earning too much and that I am a big hit
Don’t they know that they’ve put me right in the fat pig shit.
Money don’t grow on trees, you can’t fake it or grow it
And with Brexit a coming we all will be poor Brits
And being a poet, the tax scapegoat coat fits
I’ll be selling my body to pilots in cockpits
If the tossers don’t sort it out.
My working tax credit, my working tax credit
They’re taking away my working tax credit
And soon I’ll be living on bacon and beans
With a side dish of spam for I won’t afford greens
And a glass of tap water for lager is pricy
And the men at the foodbank are rugged and spicy
And the chips at the chippy are soggy and dicey
And the price of a haddock makes it highly unlikely
That I will eat a decent meal
If the tossers don’t sort it out.
My working tax credit, my working tax credit
They’re taking away my working tax credit
And soon I’ll be wearing the bones of me arse
So it looks like Primark cos my knickers are sparse
And buying from Oxfam is a bleedin farce
Cos they’ve got no fat trousers to cover me arse.
And the blouses don’t cover my ample tits
And I feel suicidal when nothing good fits.
So a naked poet I will be
if the tossers don’t sort it out.
My working tax credit, my working tax credit
They’re going to stop my working tax credit
Boris, I bet you don’t have to sign on
With your arse on your chair in your capitalist lair
and your tory possie pushing more into poverty
You’re all heartless bastards, you really don’t care
and the children are starving and benefits are sanctioned
and the country is fucked and the system’s not fair.
So get off your arses you idle pen pushers
And sort out my money – NOW!
© Sarah Drury 2019
Primani
Primani
Let’s hear it for Primark!
That cut price clothing behemoth
Where people flock and shop with shock
At ridiculous bargains, eyes agog.
Fill yer baskets, fill yer baskets,
Baskets like plus sized body bags
Shove it in, yer jeans, yer shoes,
Yer jim jams, yer panties, yer bags of rags.
Come along to the glittering golden
Universal Credit shopping paradise
Clothe your family of ten and your neighbour’s kids
For less than a McDonald’s, a bargain price!
The tired mums, red blood eyes,
suffocating their pushchair kids.
With three sleepsuits, a batman suit
and a bra with cups like jam jar lids.
The well toned teens, with their Adidas shoes
Strutting their stuff like like a pack of hyenas
Preening and posing and prancing and dancing
Like a bunch of pricks at Manchester arena.
Lairy with the arrogance that they will not
Have to take back panties that are not looking hot
For they are parachutes at a plus size twenty
Yet still don’t cover your whole lady spot.
Thinking they are James Dean or Marilyn Monroe
Hanging round the fire doors, smoking dodgy fags
Thinking they own that gangsta shit
With their £5 jeans in their cheap paper bags.
Bags, bags, let’s hear it for the paper bags!
Be careful when you step outside
With your Primani bags in the pissing down rain
A satin camisole and six pairs of silk stockings
Will go stumbling and a-tumbling down the stinking council drain.
At least you have the satisfaction of knowing that
You have a paper bag as big as a tent
Which will come in handy when you’re made homeless
From the ludicrous amount you’ve overspent!
Shoplifters looking innocent while they secretly gloat
As they stuff cans of Lynx down their rip of Nike pants
Until 20 tubes of mascara fall from their coat.
And the guards they come a running, the fucking pedants
And they leg it out the doorways like Sonic on speed
They won’t even make enough to score a joint.
And the police are coming quickly to arrest the dodgy fuckers
No bang for their buck, that’s not the point!
Security guards too busy singing poor renditions
While the dodgy folk make off with pickings of all kinds.
As another karaoke king ignores the exhibition
Of the policemen nicking wankers and slapping on big fines.
And the guards turn a blind eye and drink their pissy cuppa
Cos they’re busy watching YouTube on CCTV
Ordering Chinese takeouts on their work walkie talkies
Slavering at the thought of their Friday night tea.
While the queues are ten times bigger than the crowd for Take That
Kids screaming, posers preening, lads in gangs of rip off Nike
Folk stampeding wildly and they’re squashing shoppers flat,
Posting shit on facebook and then checking for the likes.
Photos of them shopping and their eyebrows are on fleek
Lynching other women if you see things in your size
Premeditating prospects of a cheap lacy thong
And keeping out your eye on the government funded prize!
Anaesthetized men being dragged on leashes
Following their primani-drugged women like dogs
With ferocious spending habits like blood-letting leeches.
Buying lacy bra sets and kitting out their sprogs.
And the posing, pimping Primani Queens
Resplendent with their golden hair extensions
Pride in their appearance, nails on fleek
High maintenance women with film star pretensions.
Hitting the shop for their Friday night cash splash
£20 budget just to buy their shoddy rags
For their boozy, shmoozy weekend Bacardi bash
Buying wisely, cheap, hoping for a Friday shag.
For when they’re pissed up in the street and a fit young lad they meet
Then throw it all away when the fallout’s underway
From your binge-pissed, gin kissed, night on the tiles
And your greasy chicken kebab is coming right back up to play.
Label’s with names like ‘Rebel’ for kids
Should really say ‘designed for little naughty shits’.
Fashion straight off the streets of a gangland paradise
Complete with Gangsta attitude and parental advice
Though I don’t think the imitation knuckledusters
Are particularly nice.
‘Atmosphere’ for our princess eligibility
The oppressive atmosphere at your local boozer
After ten pints of Stella and the drama of infidelity
And coming worse for wear with the mountainous bruiser,
Clothes that last as long as a box of chocolates
At a Weight Watchers’ failures’ anonymous meeting
Where the pounds have piled on and the poor duration of
the chocolates in the box is momentary, fleeting.
And I hear that Birmingham they have built a Primark paradise
With cafes and Disney, spread over 5 floors
I see spending sprees, I see solicitors’ fees. I see financial wars on couples
I see women kicking husbands out the council house doors
A beauty salon with the logo – ‘Duck and Dry’,
Should really be renamed to ‘fuck it up and cry’
Buy yourself a painted face for under a measly fiver
Look like a slap faced whore, gang banged by Crayola
Eyebrows painted like two copulating slugs
Foundation thick and moist like sticky marzipan
Lashes like you’re trapped in a spider’s web
Is it worth it just to look like a drag queen man.
Glam in a can, beauty down the pan.
So goodbye to Versace
Ditch Dolce and Gabanna
Shove it, Chanel, in a rough and ready manner
Get down to Primark
Be the next Primani Queen
Bollocks to Vivienne Westwood
Her prices are obscene!
Primark! Primark! Retailer of our hearts
Its only cash
But its cash we splash
With our hard earned pounds we part.
Let’s hear it for
PRIMARK!
© Sarah Drury 2019
the starry-eyed mermaid 