Poetry

I'm doing a bit of cash-in-hand work
in a specific and limited way
I’m nicking some pens as a justified perk
in a specific and limited way

I’m short on cash so I won’t pay my bills
in a specific and limited way
I’ll slip in some extras as I go through the tills
in a specific and limited way

Janine Booth performing at the online Punk for the Homeless gig on 6 April 2020. Poems:

Disaffected Middle-aged Women - The Girl from Clapham - Why Can't You Just Be Normal? - Thoughts and Prayers - This Place - Stonewall Was a Riot - Night Tube - Night Tube (Covid-19 remix) - Dispensible Other - Wherefore Art Thou, Capitalism? - Clap For Carers - Unskilled - Unpublished Author - Stay the Fuck Home - Mostly Hating Tories

Janine's poetic turn at the 2020 online celebration ofthe 1911 Llanelli railway strike.

Britain needs pickers
We have a picking drought
Particularly since we’ve kicked our usual pickers out

So pick yourself up
and dust yourself down
Pick up a lift heading out of your town

Here’s your harvest
basket – fill it!
Harnessing the wartime spirit!

Dig for Britain
saw us through
Let’s pick to fight off Covid too!

Please pipe down in the gallery,
desist from this distraction
We're formultaing policies,
endorsing plans of action
A Green Paper on climate change,
a White Paper on race
A ream of runic regulations
codify your place
We have a full agenda
that we're working our way through
Don't interrupt proceedings when
we're talking about you

"When the looting starts,
the shooting starts."

But when did the executing start?
When did the racist recruiting start?

And when will the prosecuting start?

That will be when the suits will start
elocuting and refuting parts,
disputing and diluting parts

Computing charts
and polluting hearts

This poem was written in response to this photograph, for a collection of poems inspired by photos taken in Manchester, compiled by Flapjack Press.

Standing outside, he is
touting for business
Guys in the doorway
show he'll do it your way
Gradients matter
Top fades and patterns

Let's keep this briefing brief

We don't want the grief

I'll shuffle my sheaf

Turn over a leaf

and pass that question to the medical chief

To see the roots of poverty

the plight of the have-nots

Don't look at little dinghies

but at massive super-yachts

First came the plume from hangar twelve
Cellphone cameras swung around
and pointed to preserve, for fear
that even worse might happen here

Next there came the second blast
Flattened buildings, shattered glass
raining pain on those not dead already