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Robyn Lewis Mar 2021
The outside is off limits and a doorstep becomes a dais,
To show frustration and sympathy,
To light a candle, to mourn
To stand with others when we cannot touch them.

The world is in chaos and the doorstep is a sanctuary,
To appreciate and commemorate,
To clap and laud,
Yet people are not paid in applause.

The doorstep is a safe space, but it is not a powerful one.
Isolated, a single tealight in the night,
No change is affected through a clap in the dark.
The doorstep is where the buck stops.

Another candle makes our streets no safer,
As women and flowers are trampled,
Pinned to the ground by the colleagues of a murderer.

A banging pan pays no person’s food bill,
As you judge your neighbours for their lack of civic pride,
Smug that you do your bit,
While you vote for those who have forced nurses to foodbanks.

A doorstep is as far as you go to remember loved ones,
Whose funerals you could not attend,
Whose deathbed you were absent from.
A doorstep where you miss them and ponder
Who is responsible for their death.
Is your doorstep where the buck stops?
Our lives crumble and fail,
East or west more losses, we avail.
Our foods turned life-******* cocktail,
You got our revenues and livelihood to curtail.

We, the creators of the foodbanks,
Our lives now turned, mere votebanks,
You destroyed all our riverbanks,
Brought our lives to end with your loan banks.

Lived and cultivated happily, with self-reliance,
Demolished our self-reliance, with your idiotic brilliance,
Deliberately stole our self-reliant roots,
Through your money-minded ****** selfish loots.

Toiled ourselves to turn lands arable, through generations,
Your land acquisitions, put us under dictator oppressions,
Blood-******* *******, gave us all fright & plight.
It’s time we rise and say Our Land is our right.
Deceived us with your developmental illusions,
Pushed us towards suicide, under incurable obsessions,

You commented our farming, old and backward.
Taught us land-killing cultivation, very awkward,
In the form of food, we harvest poisons,
With our life costing mistakes, learnt worthy lessons.

We don’t get our deserving price,
Unheard and Weakened is our voice,
To the rulers, we are just a useless choice,
For them, our deadly weeps are just a noise.

We sold our crops to middlemen,
Rulers sold our seeds to corporates,
We sold our lives, for a permanent solution.

For media, we are just a hype.
To the nature’s wrath, our crops became unripe.

For livelihood, we are compelled to get loans,
To repay you, push us to reloans,
Lose our lives, helpless and incapable to pay our loans,
Leaving our families helplessly to moan and groan.

It’s time we raise a warning.
To you we won’t keep serving,
You will realize our value,
To the corporates, when you lose your revenue.

It’s an alarm, it’s an alarm,
To the businessmen we lose our farm,
To the corporates our ownership is vested,
From owners we have turned rented.

Your life would be on danger,
Then corporates would play with your hunger,
You can’t even own a burger,
To them your lives too would turn meager.

Let’s rise and fight,
Exclaim our land is our identity and right,
Let’s correct, where we lack,
To the natural farming, let’s get back.

Let us raise,
Let us determine our price,
If we become selfish and vice,
You will lose all your slice and rice.
This poem is written in a way farmer sings towards the government and people. In the final stanzas after warning, farmers sing towards people, who witness all their miseries silent. In India, farmers lost their self-reliant farming slowly. Its time they get to it, to save them from all their worries. They want the rulers to let them determine the price for their own harvest. The land is their right. None should take it from them.
J J Mar 23
Raise a glass and drink up til the bottle is done;
Here's to addictions unconquered
Here's to suicides attached to names not known well enough to grieve for
Here's to the burden one passes onto another when one gets too comfortable
Here's to those who cared when no one else did
Here's to those adolescent walks in the dark chasing shadows
Here's to us speaking til we fell asleep mid sentences
Here's to the lovers who kicked us out the house then kicked us in the head for leaving
Here's to walking in circles with each step painless for the first time in forever & staring out into nothing astounded
Here's to smoking for the first time in months and thinking back to one night years before and the self-inflicted concussions that followed
Here's to the faces we can't look at anymore without our chests caving inward & hating ourselves
Here's to the fascia tissue unzipped & exposed and cringed at & regretted & better left forgotten the next morning
Here's to our sorries telepathically sent & unsent
Here's to forgiveness reached in silence
Here's to time healing nothing but changing everything
Here's to first kisses and final goodbyes
Here's to when she wore his dress for the first time and he her boots
Every vice has it's versa and every versa it's vice, right? right. so
Here's to holding hands with another for another first with heart pounding and surrounding eyes staring or going out of their way not to stare the closer they'd get
Here's to saying **** everyone & everything else when you know beyond a doubt what's right is right
Here's to ugly faces made pretty up-close and seeing pretty faces turn ugly
Here's to spending those last pennies on the first pack of cigarettes in years and looking into foodbanks & catshelters incase nothing got better
Here's to laughing hysterically after getting told you were cheated on, knowing you won't be the paranoid ******* for breaking up again and the hangover-like realisation two days later when the worthlessness settled in
Here's to those lonely walks home covered in blood & punching busstops & ******* in the middle of the street undisturbed by a single soul in-passing
Here's to that hour writhing in a floored mattress screaming the same name over & over again to no answer
Here's to things not working out as planned and it being upto you for that to be for a reason,
Here's to being comatosed & frostbit in pisssoaked jeans as crying family waited for the ambulance to arrive
(surely, I'm not the only one who was supposed to die at thirteen but didn't?)
Here's to the writers who changed how we wrote, the gentle man obsessed with mud turnt muck & thunderstorms & ******* and the pretty French boy and the boundless reclusive femcel before her time
Here's to the men & women we could never become
Here's to love stated but no longer felt, and vice versa and vice versa.

And
Here's to this, the final top up of the night! -too drunk or too tired? either or- and what a night it's been, considering the weight of all those nights before;

Here's to all those loves that never worked out & all those suicidal nights alone trembling with fear of the following day & the next, all leading to you and I sharing this wonderful day together.
Honestly? I wouldn't trade it for the world
Ow
Fee Berry Jun 2022
We dined on caviar
And famine in Europe
Seemed most unlikely
The world began to burn

We watched the queues lengthen
As the poor queued at foodbanks
But our Ocado deliveries
Continued nonetheless

Rebellious types protested
And journeys took longer
Really very annoying
We hoped that they’d be jailed

The news was full of Amber
And next season’s fashions
Ukraine, Yemen and Gaza
Were very far away

Life went on as normal
The monkeypox came to us
The insects died in millions
And we started then to fear

Life went on as normal
The sea levels were rising
But that is in the future?
And still the world burned

Life went on as normal
But food was more expensive
The poor were still hit hardest
And still the world burned

Life went on as normal
We began to see the die off
We still had ***** and burgers
And still the world burned

Life began change as
We knew we should have acted
Food was getting scarcer
And still the world burned
And still the world burned
And still the world burned
And still the world burned.
Dedicated to Extinction Rebellion and all who work for their aims.
Andy Hunter Apr 2021
So many lives destroyed by greed
Too many hungry mouths to feed.
The rich blame the poor for being lazy and feckless
The poor blame the rich for being greedy and reckless.

Refugees escape from terror and wars.
Dreaming of landing on welcoming shores.
Condemned by the government, who say they can’t stay
Yet happily collect all the taxes they pay

The wealthy send their children to the best public schools
Some look upon the poorest as just worthless fools
The poor are divided while the richest still prosper
While queues at local foodbanks continue to grow longer

Covid is rampant and many have died
Indecisive leadership is the main reason why
As ministers line friends’ pockets with contracts and fees
All we see are price rises and ******

Government leaders instructed all to stay home
While some friends and relatives were dying alone
As hospital visits and large gatherings were banned
Top Tories went ahead with the parties they’d planned

Leaders are chosen by media manipulation
Then fight their cause with enhanced reputations
Our press is controlled by the wealthiest few.
So, who really decides what we see in the news?

These are political issues, but many don't care.
Yet the wealth divide remains massively unfair.
Many believe they just have no choice
So, stand up and be heard, coz we all have a voice.
There are more beggars than there are witches on broomsticks at Euston Station.

It's always been that way and I'm expecting ( no, not a baby ) it to remain the same,

Begging is a game for most and a necessity for the few who really do need assistance

The NAB or the National Assistance Board
got fed up with their **** and turfed them
off the books years ago
and now they go
to where the pickings are easier.

It's indicative of something lacking
both in the beggar and in the system
that forces people onto the streets and
into foodbanks

but what do I know?
*** all
shouts the claptrap in
the back row
and for once
the little ***** is right.

— The End —