Militant Thistles
polemical poetry to prickle the politics of "permanent austerity"
thistles stretch their prickly arms afar
Andy Brown
Austerity’s Villanelle
It is all very well championing austerity
while so many people are poor
but can somebody please tell me how poverty equals prosperity
when rent-raising landlords lack compassion or humility
and claimants are sanctioned by fifty-pound law?
It is all very well championing austerity
when those that are in power are a minority
that cut, trash and sever by departmental claw
but can somebody please tell me how poverty equals prosperity?
What hope is there for the majority
who know lack of a goal means no prospect to score?
It is all very well championing austerity
whilst a hungry belly gives no serenity
and you can’t trust those who you vote for
but can somebody please tell me how poverty equals prosperity?
How on earth do they have the temerity
to squash their opposition to the floor?
It is all very well championing austerity
but can somebody please tell me how poverty equals prosperity?
Andy Brown performs under the title of 'The Grandad from Knowle West'. He has been awarded regeneration awards for his work in the community and has been published in Cultured Vultures online magazine where one week he won second prize in their weekly competition ('Mistaken State') and another week won third prize ('Jihadi Blackberries'). While in prison Brown was published in the national Open University newsletter distributed to every prison in the UK as well as winning a Koerstler Award Highly Commended Certificate.
A Sonnet to Free Benefit
Benefit; confusing word oft used, seldom heard or understood as if it ever could be something good that perhaps should be celebrated not calibrated by government.
Internment was another designed to smother those that could not agree how the state should be free; through conditions ascribed, opportunities proscribed, of how to live and give within
the norm and form of a perfect storm of oppression.
Now, again, there is a need for love to seed, to patch the thatch of the roof of truth that shelters the helter-skelter and merry go round found in a dripping sieve of media that gives a tributary of fear where compassion will completely disappear into an ugly pool of aggression.
But wait, we can choose how to live and know why to give is only ever the right decision, snuff out the light that ignites the fight of those who live for derision, those that are weak, that only ever seek to feel the sickly heel of fear that cannot hear the call of those that are free to only ever welcome the refugee, those of us, the sum of the welcome, a few who are true to the soul of the Great British nation that offers salvation to give lie to manipulation of how we should live or give in this land of ours where we should always be free to accept the refugee.