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.
Tag: Poetry
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
Am I a Poet?
Am I a Poet?
Am I a poet?
Do the words that flow in book or on screen
Reflect dramatic emotions that go unseen?
Does my happiness make you smile?
Do you bare your satisfied teeth like a hungry crocodile?
Do my words of suicide hanging in the air like a cloud of despair
Destroy your sanctimonious bliss beyond repair?
Do they have you ringing 999 whilst you panic inconveniently in your chair?
Yeah, I thought so.
Am I a poet?
Are my words like rock salt on a frozen ice rink?
Does my punctation uncontrollably stammer,
is my modest pretense full of glamour?
Do I lift your sorry spirit or make your joyful heart sink?
Just because people smile doesn’t mean they are smiling
and just because they shout the loudest doesn’t mean they can sing.
And the words aren’t always soothing like a triple gin and tonic
They can fucking sting.
But I meant to do that.
Am I a poet?
Do I thrill you? Do I chill you to the arthritic bone?
Do the words paint pictures of terror, images so uncomfortable
That you get off Instagram and shut down your one thousand dollar phone?
Or do you take delight in the fright, in the sight,
In the horror before you, your nightmare Twilight Zone.
You’re a loser, you needed some company, you feel so alone.
You’re a regular sociopath, your friends have all gone.
Do I do that?
Am I a poet?
Do I live with my eyes in the tangerine sky?
With my mind up ahead in a fairytale shed
Do I dwell in the lands of the metaphoric
Reality not living up to the dream as I ask myself why.
As I deal in yarns of happy, happy, happy talky
Where the words paint a picture so far from my life I could cry.
Where I am a crack dealer, but the high is a visible lie
When the words fail to come, then my bullet is up and I tragically die.
A lie, right?
Am I a poet?
Or am I a purveyor of meaningless, nonsense words?
Or a dreamer of attainable dreams, a weaver of worrysome woes
A creator of the highest joys, the lowest, the deadest, the absurd?
Do I bleed enough for you every night on screen?
For my words are my creative, poetic blood.
Each night I slit my wrists again and again
Just for the chance that I might strike gold
That my words might actually be love
That my life might actually
Be inspired from above.
But Am I a Poet?
© Sarah Drury 2019
the starry-eyed mermaid 