Tag: Social Issues

Skipped

Published on by Sarah DruryLeave a comment

I skip along these scummy streets
Scuff the needles with my Tough girl Doc Martens
Pass the burnt-out Vauxhall Zafira
I’ve lived here a year, I think I’m starting
To blend in with the natives
I’ve perfected the ‘don’t fuck with me’ stare
I walk past the gangs of teens
and put on the act that I don’t care
(and wear my nonchalant face)

I’m used to the tab ends and smidgens of weed
I find in the communal lobby when I’m on my way out
Coke snorting tubes littering the stairwell
Kids smoking joints when the police aren’t about
My son sees the signs and knows all the vocab
I’m trying to tell him that drugs can be lethal
He wanted to know where the dealers live
I tell him that these people are dodgy, be careful
We don’t want our heads kicking in!

I walk the streets taking in the deprivation
when at my feet I find a huge bag of weed
I wonder if a drug runner has dropped it by accident
I consider its value, my bank balance it could feed
I have visions of piles of black-market cash
And takeaways unlimited, new clothes and hairdos
But if the druggies found out I’d purloined their stash
I think of my body splashed over the news
And I get paranoid that some dodgy geezer
is watching me, waiting to kick my head in
So I leave the package where I left it
And let someone else partake in their sin

And I walk along the scummy street
Til I see my safe little council flat
and I think about the stash of dope
and wonder what kind of stupid twat
would drop it
Psychedelic lost property!

©2020 Sarah Drury

Notions of Class

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CAUTION: ADULT CONTENT

I had a very mixed childhood. My father, who died when I was seven, was a chartered accountant, and my mother had to do a variety of jobs to make ends meet, working her fingers to the bone. I wanted a better life, I wanted to be Middle Class. I studied at uni, wore the clothes, honed the accent, got a top notch teaching job, sang with professional choir. But mental illness got the better of me and my nicey nicey world came tumbling down. I have dropped my pretensions and am proud of my roots.

I tried to up myself
To better myself
To stick my nose in the air
I didn’t really care
Back then
About my poor, arthritic mother
Packing crisps down the factory
Or living in council shitholes
Because my mum’s wages
Were unsatisfactory
Single parent, widowed mother
One step from the shitheap
My story was just like another
And another
On our estate.

I never quite understood
The wine thing
Was it red with meat
And white with fish?
It had always been a case of
Just getting pissed
On any old cheapo plonk
I was a classless pisshead
Had to step up my game
Didn’t want my shameful roots
To catch me out again
So fucking sick of
Being related to the woman
Who cleaned up the pile of puke
So fucking sick of it

I thought a silk Monsoon dress
And a Cheadle postcode
Made me one
Of the elite
Talking like a village vicar
But fucking the men
Beneath the sodden sheets
Within the sordid walls
Not the epitome of discrete
And the milk man
Never noticed
The skulking, adulterous feet
Seeking silence
Betwixt the dawn chorus

Mental illness
Had no bounds
I was ebbing my life away
Behind bars in
Psychiatric compounds
Swapping my Monsoon frocks
For electric shocks
Lithium, Valium
Straight jackets worn like
psychosis condoms
On men’s misogynist cocks
Sanity took years
Craziness is
Classless

I am proud
Now
To be called working class
I’m proud to hold my head high
As I walk upon the needle littered grass
In this steel town hometown
Keeping my vowels plain and flat
And minimising my metaphors
Like I’m waltzing on broken glass
Don’t want my neighbours
To think
I’ve got
Pretentious
Notions
Of
Class

© 2020 Sarah Drury

Muriel

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A character based on many women i have met during my stays in psychiatric hospitals…

Muriel

Beyond her twenty years
She looked
With her duvet of fiery red curls
Coiling like delinquent serpents
On a Medusa inspired scalp
An artist could not etch so finely
The lines which lay as an insult
Upon a face which had weathered Hell
Eyes dancing like a ballerina
In a shit-filled pigsty
And she’s clutching a map full of no destinations
But she knows where she’s going
And there ain’t no angels
Strumming wistful tunes on golden harps

Big bones brawled beneath
Criss cross flesh
With the sorry scars of harming self
The sorry scars of hating self
The sorry scars of berating self
Pain fuelled tram lines
Hurtling to Hell
And she’s clutching a fist full of Disneyland dreams
But she knows where she’s going
And there ain’t no wise St Peter
Heralding her arrival at the pearly gates

A blank canvas once
Though now an impressionist’s masterpiece
With the purple hues
And the green and blue clues
And the red in slews of how’s yer father
Punctured pathology
Peddling pinpricks
Parading pangs of predilection
And she’s clutching a dream full of fairytale fantasies
But she knows where she’s going
And a utopian Jesus ain’t there
With his meek open arms and his forgiveness smiles

Eyes flecked with flashing blue
Sparkling in dreams
But in waking, like warm, flat champagne
Her mind mocking
At every heart-choked twist of fate
Nothing that
A puff of weed
A snort of coke
Best friend, the needle
Wouldn’t pleasantly anaesthetise
And she’s clutching a dream of a kilo of weed
But she knows where she’s going
And it ain’t no fluffy clouded heaven

And she’s clutching a dream of a better life
But she knows where she’s going
And it ain’t home

©2020 Sarah Drury

Mocking Bird

Published on by Sarah DruryLeave a comment

Based on a real life case. Child cruelty breaks my heart. Poor innocents.

Poem is written for spoken word, so the rhyming and meter are pretty loose.

Mocking Bird

Hush little baby don’t say a word
Mamma’s gonna buy you a mocking bird
And crazy mamma’s off her head, fucking sky high
And if you scream blue murder and if you dare to cry
Why do people shy away, why do they turn a blind eye
To your misery and suffering
For we know only angels sing
And your little face will really feel the sting
Of that slap, that clap of anger, that frustration
Love’s a lie and pain’s part of a ring
Why do babies cry, why do fists fly, why does love die?

Hush little baby, don’t say a word
Mamma’s shooting up heroin, her hazy conscience is blurred
Her speech is slurred, her morals are absurd, not a peep out of you
Don’t whisper a fuckin breath, because if she heard
If she heard
If she heard

Hush little baby don’t say a word
You were never born to fly, never born to be a songbird
Your wings were clipped when you were born into your lowly council flat
In your second hand tat, to have or to have not, and your needs were last, you wore the charity hat
Your mother in public places smiling like a Cheshire cat
Then behind closed doors using fists and tongues like a baseball bat.

Why didn’t we know, why didn’t we see, why didn’t we hear?
Why didn’t we feel what you feel, with your heart like a plea and your soul like a tear
When a child was suffering, cowering, pleading for an end to the fear
In the show of things she cooed and smiled and held her baby near
Yet who knows what went on in her screwed up head, it’s never really clear
But flesh and blood is sacred, you cherish it, you nurture it, you worship it
You don’t live a lie, you don’t live a lie

Hush little baby, don’t say a word
Mummy’s going to prison and it’s an end to your bruised, scarred world
And the social worker’s finding you a caring, loving home
And your daddy’s lost his custody and he’s alone and it’s done
And
Now you can sing your own song
Now you can sing your own pretty song

©2020 Sarah Drury

Shit Mum

Published on by Sarah DruryLeave a comment

WARNING: SWEARING ALERT!

Yesterday was a tough day where I felt like a totally bad parent. I felt like rocking with a teddybear, sucking a dummy and banging my head on a wall!

I must defiantly admit it
I didn’t think as a mother I would be so shit
A northerner, a salt of the earth working class brit
But I’m about as patient as a toddler who’s been asked to sit
Through twenty episodes of Coronation Street with a lip that’s bruised and slit
But I’m building him up for a spell at her Majesty’s in the nick
When he’s fifteen years and a bit.

I think I’ve just had enough
I didn’t think as a mother it would be so tough
I didn’t think the days would be so dreary, nights so rough
I never knew CBeebies was such torture til I’d had enough
Of Mr fucking Tumble and his Makaton special stuff
I want to get the fucker into everlasting handcuffs
Let’s see him last five minutes in this ruff and tumble neighbourhood.

I think I need a fag
I didn’t think as a mother I would lose my rag
I didn’t think I’d turn into a bloody vicious nag
Thirty years ago I was a stunner, a looker, a stellar shag
And now I’m looking rougher, like a no fag, no shag, hag
And I slob around in PJ’s like a degenerate, depressed bag
With my Primark/Lidl/Aldi/Iceland cheap ass price tag.

I know I’m no Barbie doll
I didn’t think a mother’s life would seem so bland and droll
I didn’t think I’d end up with the amusement shortfall
Playing games of banging heads against a council concrete wall
Wishing I could stab a knife into my bleedin kid’s football
My kid acting like a gangsta when he’s only 5 foot tall.
Saying no she don’t live here when the hard debt collectors call.

I didn’t think that as a mother I would be so shit
I didn’t think that as a teacher I would be so bad at it
I always thought that I would be a Supernanny big hit
But now I’m slumming, tunes a hummin, leggings that my arse don’t fit
My kid’s a screaming, social worker’s looking at my home pit
And making snotty comments about the mess and bloody state of it.

But I try my best, each shitty day to be a better mum
But it’s hard when you’re bipolar and the moodswings always come.

©2019 Sarah Drury