Ode to that bloody awful music you get when you ring the DWP! And the way they compartmentalise our disabled kids!

Vivaldi
Your timeless beauty sounds so ugly
In its incessant, perpetual monotony
On the end of this goddamn phone
Streamed into had-enough ears
As I wait
As I wait
As I wait
My last thread of patience almost gone
My son a statistic
As you sit in your ivory tower offices
Ticking criteria boxes
Playing God but Godless
Not giving a flying fuck
That my kid is a human being
Not some faceless scrounger
Not some work shy loser
Not some benefit fraudster
Just a child.

Vivaldi
Never had perfection
Sounded so brash, so annoying
Like salt rubbed into raw, bleeding wounds
Waiting for a ‘how can I help you?’
Waiting for the punchline to the joke
The pretence
The ‘we care’ rhetoric
But in their defence
They deal with pounds and pence
Not hearts.

Vivaldi
Whilst my child can walk, can talk
What the fuck do you know?
He eats, he sleeps, his mind is set on go slow
He has a learning disability
He tries, his mind denies him
Of a ‘normal’ life
His condition a serrated knife
With jagged aspirations.
But he can walk, he can talk
He eats, he sleeps
That is all you need
You do not see him
Yet your protocol has agreed
To reduce his benefits.
Like some germinated seed
Who is yanked from the ground
And tossed into the gutter
To save a pound
While the voice of my spirit resounds
In futile, hostile whispers.

Vivaldi
I hope one day you know what it is like
To have a child with a disability
To raise a soul with a differing ability
So that you develop empathy
Where there was apathy
So that sympathy spreads its comforting palms
Around torn, worn parents
So that understanding spews from mouths
Of those invested in the system
So that disabled kids are not pawns
In austerity
So that politics are not a mitigating factor
In this cancer we call an equal, enabling society.

©2020 Sarah Drury