The Tories treat

our nurses with contempt

our doctors with disdain

our firefighters with derision

our ambulance workers with disrespect

our railway staff with scorn

our carers with despisal

our armed forces with antipathy

our sick with neglect

our elderly with indignity

our teachers with ridicule

our children with condescension

our pensioners with contempt

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I

and I alone

upon my bed of cobbled stone

Ponder

   As my flesh weeps into gravel sheets

I ponder what it must be like

to be whole again

   To feel I had a soul again

This dessicated shell

crumbles like mountain scree

down, down to the hungry, black sea

lapping and licking at the feet of my bed

dragging out, with the tide, 

such meagre light from my hea...

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I went to the market today, 

I bought some Haddock.

Under the present circumstances it seemed like the best thing to do,

There’s nothing in the shops,

Not even toilet paper

It looks like things are going down the pan very rapidly

What a thin veneer

Civilisation is so fragile

No thicker than a sheet of tissue paper, so gossamer.

I poached it in a bit of milk, the Haddock,

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Minds mould cannot always bend to the will - Look!

A blur of surreal reality:

it’s vivid, a memory, a means 

but travel through years 

and maybe it’s a dream,

or the worst fear:

(for the youth with infantile stretch marks to hear)

Forgotten.

For the youths with flat ironed flesh and barely dogmarked ears,

what we all fear

 is to forget.

Tell the boy with the newly ...

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There’s a tropical isle, Gran Canaria,

Famed for sun, sea and sand –

Mavis and Fred flew over,

To escape Lancashire’s cold winter land.

Mavis said, “Eee, ‘tis hot in these woolly tights,

Let’s find summer shorts that flatter me bum

Throw away beiges and blacks,

Colour up, like the sky and the sun!”

She returned like a red hibiscus

(And that were only her face...

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Last stop before paradise.                                                                              

An April rain has streaked the windows, smudging the view of suburban streets.

The chill breeze bends the spring’s first flowers and the TV’s showing old repeats.

In the lounge of The Willows nursing home the care assistants are serving teas.

After the adverts comes the snooker and ever...

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