Poems on Poverty – a series of interconnected poems: present/past/future
The Workhouse Card
Twenty first century workhouse
walls are plastic carried
from place to place
allowing you your
daily bread your
bowl of gruel your
boiled onion
providing your uniform
ity, ensuring your conform
ity, prohibiting luxury
for your
benefit.
So many useful app
lications so much i n f o
r m a t i o n .
Chips. Entitlement.
Status.
Twenty first century workhouse
walls are
real.
Twenty first century workhouse
walls are just
a beginning.
Lessons in Humility
They
stand in line to buy
their dinner tickets
pink as their cheeks
are flush.
It divides us.
We
wait ‘til teacher
calls us out. FREE
dinners now may stand
in line.
There are three of us.
They
sometimes ask why
I have a blue ticket.
My father doesn’t work.
I lie
to stop from crying.
We
are poor and the blue
ticket doesn’t allow
second helpings
I find
like Oliver.
They
make you surrender
blue tickets.
At each humiliation
I pale
into insignificance.
Chips
When capitalism implodes and the myth of the middle explodes to reveal that only the rich are really rich. When the gamut of coloured cards is played out and exposed to reveal that only the rich are really rich and the microchip inserts under the skin at birth to the reveal the poor; they will still insist there was a god born in a stable who dictates
earth is replete but
the beggar’s bowl must remain
forever empty
Oonah V Joslin has 100 Microhorrors and 3 coveted Hallowe’en prizes, is currently working as poetry editor at The Linnet’s Wings Literary Magazine and blogs at Parallel Oonahverse .