Poetry

Carillion’s
Made its billions
Now its debt is so big, its account’s in vermillion
With coldness reptilian
It dumps on civilians
Rides off into sunset; the Tories ride pillion
If it were not so serious, it would be vaudevillian

A place becomes a shithole
when someone digs a hole and shits in it
Someone like you, Donald Trump,
and all the rulers and raiders
and tin-pot dictators
the speculators and devastators
the extractors and the malefactors

When history tells of mighty kings
Who's working wonders in the wings?
Fighting battles, changing things?
Disaffected Middle-Aged Women!

In 1848 they came
To Seneca Falls to stake their claim
Mature and bolshy, never tame -
Disaffected Middle-aged Women!

Expectant families
in temporary digs
waiting for a miracle
Led here by a burning star
and a government demand
to be counted

Drawing the short straw
bedding down in the stalls
Because there's no room
in the inner workings
of the political economy
for them

Watched over by
donkeys and sheep
Interrupted sleep
Silent night
Keeping the light on

In response to the news that the Pope wants to change the words of the Lord's Prayer ...

My body is a timeline
with every thick and fine line
marking a milestone
time-grown
Each tract and fracture
captured
and preserved
a chapter
in each roll and curve

She’s safely shut in and yet Hettie gets out
And she goes to the places she cares most about

Hettie gets out under cover of dark
And she pushes the kids on the swings in the park

Hettie meets Beryl who moved out last June
And they chat about old times and tap out a tune
And then Hettie tells Bel she’ll be joining her soon

Video of Janine performing at NeurodiVERSE, an evening of autistic poetry in Leeds on 22 November 2017.

It includes the poems:

• Being Normal
• Manifesto from Behind the Mask
• No Autistics Here
• Haiku
• Mostly Hating Tories
• BoJo Logic
• Night Tube
• Disaffected Middle-aged Women