I live in Scunthorpe, quite a deprived little town, and the town centre is almost derelict as there are so many empty shops! I wrote this poem after a walk around town yesterday. Most video content is my own.
Tag: austerity
Happy Birthday Jesus
Happy birthday Jesus
Lying in your simple manger
Lowly, meek, humble,
commercialism a stranger
bet ya didn’t know that years to come
your beloved day of birth
would become a multitrillion franchise
that gifts of gold and myrrh and frankincense
by men proclaiming themselves wise
would morph into a creed of greed whilst children plead to be good indeed
for the wise men don’t bring gifts anymore
it’s a fat bloke in a red suit, black boots
white hair and beard, rosy cheeks belying his white privileged roots
and you’d better be good, didn’t you know he could
leave you a sack of broken dreams, fuck you coal
leave you a psychological smear on your childhood.
Happy birthday Jesus
Bet you didn’t know
That whilst your parents struggled in their desperation
Not aware of the glory and jubilation
Piss poor with not a roof to call their place
The masses would be gorging on a turkey feast
With food to feed a capitalist appetite
with trolleys loaded like culinary weapons fueling the consumerist beast
that the arm of the machine of Commercialism has been greased
that simplicity and modesty and want not are deceased
And why not have a bite out of the Christmas cake
And choke on the excesses in which our society partakes
A mouthful of craziness and a sentiment that’s fake.
Happy birthday Jesus
Bet your simple manger
Didn’t look like the Las Vegas strip
With the star of Bethlehem glowing modestly
With promises of greatness and goodness
And wisdom and benevolent leadership.
Whilst the glare of commercialism is blinding
With its 1000,000 watt show of excess and falsity
Showing how Jesus has become a commercial commodity
How the denial of humility has become a societal monstrosity
What’s wrong with a single star and a birth of mediocrity.
What’s wrong with our world?
What is this pretense that there is no inequality?
What is this illusion, this fucked up dishonesty.
So Happy Birthday Jesus
I know it wasn’t your dream
To see the world bedecked in its outrageous festive theme
I know if you came back today
Your mind would be devastated, your heart would scream
But Happy birthday
Happy birthday
Welcome to this world’s fucked up consumer dream.
©2019 Sarah Drury
I Remember a Time
I remember a time
Back when our innocence was Christmas
And love was Christmas
And peace was Christmas
And Joy was Christmas
Today I cancelled a haircut
I cancelled a haircut because I’m living on the bones of my arse
And I don’t want my child to wake up to no presents
I don’t want his pile of pleasure to be meagre and sparse
And the sense of pride I felt walking out of the toy shop
With 2 bags of toys and hair looking like crap
When I’m caught in the commercialism of our days
Caught in the have, have, have, not need, trap.
Like a vulture lurking over a dying breed
Like a human possessed by consumer greed.
Today I went to the cashpoint
And took out my last fifty pounds
Hoping my child tax credit will stop me making the cash convertors rounds
And being a mother, I always come last
And being a widow, I wear a happy mask
And where are the presents for me?
But I am so used to being the invisible recipient
I only get the gifts that come free
The ones you cannot see.
And that is ok
By me.
Today I put up the tree
A bargain from the pop up Christmas shop
Looks like shit but once the gaudy baubles hide
Its anorexic branches, once the lights are twinkling
Then the cheap as shit look will stop.
And it stands there proudly
As proud as any rich bitch tree
A symbol of years of austerity
But I don’t care
My tree says I have tried
I have really tried
Money is nice, it buys things
It buys things
But I remember when simplicity was Christmas
I remember when gratefulness was Christmas
I remember when asking for nothing was Christmas
And I wonder where did it all go horribly wrong
When did the world start singing this god awful consumerist song?
©2019 Sarah Drury
Britain’s Breadline Kids
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
Prime Shop to Let
Our little town is turning into a ghost town!
Warning, swearing.
Prime Shop to Let
Prime shop to let
As I walk through this ghost town centre
Prime shop to let
Prime shop to let.
Arrogant
As though they have the monopoly
Over the other shops
Who were once prime
Once to let
Now buckling under the weight of a money sucking landlord
And saying fuck you to Amazon Prime and the inventor of the World Wide Web.
Prime shop to let
To let
Toilet
That always amused me as a kid.
As though the empty walls were vessels for the shit that hit the fan
When the profits plummeted
And the game was up
And shop doors shut
And shop doors shut
And they are shutting
And they are shutting
In Scunthorpe.
Faster than the council can raise the council tax
Faster than the homeless’ belongings are confiscated by the police
Faster than the shoplifter’s legs when the shopkeeper gave chase
Faster than a line of coke up a druggy’s nose.
Faster than you can spell the cunt in Scunthorpe.
You can hear the rattle of the grim reaper’s bones
As he loiters with his scythe
Waiting, waiting
Chalk bone fingers cracking gleefully
Waiting, waiting
As the death bells knoll
and austerity takes its toll
and retail is just another rag doll
that the voodoo government have stuck their pins in
that the voodoo government have tossed around
like they don’t give a shit.
Because this is Scunthorpe and not Sandringham.
Scunthorpe
You may as well become a dot com
for the doors are shutting
the doors are shutting
and we don’t want any more charity shops
and even the poundshops aren’t pulling in the punters.
It’s all strolling around in your second hand coat
with your greasy kebab and your lottery ticket
and hoping you’ll get the bonus ball
when you’ll celebrate with a bottle of cheap Prosecco from Aldi
and a smiling photo in the Scunthorpe Telegraph.
Even the paper used to be nightly
But there’s only enough news for one week now.
And its always the same news. Always the same.
Prime shop to let.
Prime shop to let.
Prime town to let.
It’s sad.
© 2019 Sarah Drury
Sarah Drury 