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It's Not Working

A young man simple decent lad Unemployed never had a job Only wanted to work  Earn a decent wage Settle down have some kids And a holiday once a year Young man working class lad Unemployed never had a job With a load of mates Placards and blisters Fallen arches and media disinterest Went marching down to London town To tell them how it is to be unemployed Young man northern lad Unemployed never had a job Scared of emotions Though has them right enough Just keeps them in their place Right about where his stomach is Daren't let them out to heart or head Where he knows they’ll cause him pain Young man quiet unassuming lad Unemployed never had a job On the way to London town Met an old woman Who he thinks about a lot Years later over his one pint A night in the local pub where He and his mates go sometimes Young man official statistic Unemployed never had a job Marched through a town Somewhere north of here Cam
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Horse

Written  as a creative writing exercise in response to a photograph of a statue of a horse's head.   In his lovely eyes,  Sorrow has closed into a circle   For the road has no ending And he must drag behind him  The whole world   These words once fell from the pen of a poet  In whose mind were etched  Reflections of the wretched  Refugees  Persons  Displaced by war-mongering madness Snaking their sad-faced ways  Toward some semblance of peace and reason   And among them Weighted down With loss and pitiful belongings Ears pinned  Head low Neck gaunt  Haunches hollow Were those in whose mouth  Man had long since come to dwell And upon whose willing dorsum Man had been able to swell His numbers and his dominion   What we owe this stoic single toed entity  Whose entire existence is motion  Who is happy only in association Cannot be measured by imaginations That run solely on calculations of utility      
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Abused

I The trouble with me  She said Is I don't believe  I have a right To feel Like this What happened to me  She said  Is nothing Compared to what  Some people suffer After all  Is said and done I am alive  I live I love In my own way Compared to some people I am lucky So what right Do I have To feel like this The trouble with me  She said Is I feel besieged  Fears of self-indulgence  Encircle my small pain And make me doubt its truth   II   There  Somewhere there In her mind in her heart In her soul if she has one She holds onto her small sorrow Like a battered woman Holds on to the belief that she isn't mad Like an abused child Clings to the hope that she isn't bad   She clasps her small sorrow close to her breast Keeping it warm alive and blessed With her daily attention to its details   In the great scheme of things This global glut of cruelty This world wide web of wickedness Hers was a very small injury In memory In deed She feels That to place her pain alongside the h
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THE HARVEST

The Crop   The voice cut through her daydream like glass through skin. Soupie caught her breath before it leapt from her mouth. The effort almost made her gag. Her companions glanced at her, their eyes cold and calculating. Had she made a sound they would have killed her, without thought or compunction. She avoided their looks. Even to break the separation could result in death. It was essential to stay inside oneself.  She slowly turned her eyes back towards the wall across the street, towards the window the voice had come from. A hand waved, slowly turning and twisting, like bleached kelp in slow, deep waves. Her hands twitched in unconscious response. A dim childhood memory of returning a wave, of the fascination of contact with a stranger, made her hand listen to a deeper voice than her fear of her companions. Thin and pale, the fingers waved and floated as though the hand was trying to catch the wind. Soupie tried to imagine the face of the person the arm belonged to and in her fa
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