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
Came face to face 
With an old woman
Who stepped up to him
Grabbed his hands said
Good on you son
You tell them son from me

Young man unused to emotion
No good with words
Except to do with bikes 
And racing them at weekends
Stood and stared at the old woman
Holding on to him 
Like a crucifix
Stared at a face that spoke deep in him
With its rough skin
Thin mouth and tired honest eyes

You tell them son 
Make sure you tell them
How it is for the likes of thee and me

Young man naïve and trusting
Heart filled and unsuspecting
Fell prey to a scavenger
That followed the march
Hoping for scraps of scandal 
Or hint of revolution brewing
Tried to tell the man how he’d felt
About the old woman 
Tried to find the words to say
How he’d felt he knew her and 
Had seen through her 
All the generations
Stretching back through time
Of those like her who were like him
Had seen her pain and disillusion
The erosion of lost opportunity
The corrosion of loss of community 


And this young man saw his fine fragile feeling
His special shining moment
Reflected back at him in the pebble eyes
Deflected by the curling cynic’s lip
Reduced derided scorned made cheap
And his faltering brave words
Felt limp and lame
And died in his throat

And the petty little scribbler
The dirty little diddler
The mercenary the hireling the ponce
Who would write to jerk tears 
About the pain of the privileged
Of the strain of life at the top
Who would lie distort and confuse to order
Sneered smirked and slid away
Leaving his slimy cynic’s trail 
Across the pages of the press next day

Somewhere north of here
A working class man unemployed again
Had and lost a dozen dead end jobs
Still thinks about that woman 
Now long dead
Still carries around that moment
Like a talisman
Tucks it into his heart each day
For safekeeping 
Still bright still clear still true

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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
Read more

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      
Read more