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
the starry-eyed mermaid 