I’m not Paranoid, I just don’t Trust anyone
By Louise M. Hart
Don’t look at me
Don’t-look-at-me
Does my face threaten your subjectivity
Or put you off your cup of tea?
I took my tablets today
So now I’m symptom free
What do you see…
When you meet my glare?
I pull out my hair
And worry that you can see my scaly skin
Through the tear
In my jeans or smell my underwear
I pretend not to care
But I am crucified inside
Like Jesus Christ mounted on a cross of mind
After forty days and forty nights in the wilderness
Of my turbulent mental flight
Like squabbling lovers my thoughts scream and shout
I try to quieten them
In case you can hear
But you laugh in fear
Don’t look at me
Don’t-look-at-me
I look at you
And suddenly remember that you are only three
Rent Boy
By Louise M. Hart
He silently sits in a busy underpass
Raggedy man reflecting his soul like glass
“Only the poor give to the poor,” He thinks
A benefit scrounger inserts a pound coin
Between his teeth
And drops it into raggedy man’s hat
He eats empty plates of thoughts for dinner
And dreams of being fat
His heart has no home
Less, his body resides in the West Midlands of nowhere
He does not even own a cat
Called Bob
Man, it is boring here
Where he cannot afford a beer or a filtered cigarette
His brow is lined with the sweat of circumstance and distress
And all because his Mother called him, “a sinner”
He was big in Moseley once
Now he is invisible in an underpass
Wanker banker leaves work at 5.33
He passes Mr Raggedy
And notices the curve of his lips
His hungry brown eyes
And delicate finger tips
He rubs his wallet
Tea at Nanna’s
By Louise M. Hart
Sit at the table girls
Remember to say, “Please,” and “Thank you”
And never use bad words
Like, “Oh God,” and, “sod,” and “bloody ‘ell”
Children should be seen but never heard
Except by those who wash their underwear
Pretend to contentedly defer
To your superiors; the vicars and doctors
Who will one day fear
The glare of your exterior
Nose studs which endear you to the great unwashed
Bovver boots yielding you to trample underfoot
The mass who speak with crap
Leaking through the cracks of their posteriors
Sterilised milk makes our guts heave
But we say, “Thank you,” when it is poured into our cups
Butter sandwiches, a slice of ham inside
Nanna watches us eating, almost pulsating with pride
Tinned peaches as slippery as brine
When eaten with butter and bread
And combined with love and twinkling blue eyes
And the cakes…
We all like a bit of what you fancy
Mine was French
And encased in perfectly pink skin
Creamy upon the touch of my tongue
And slobbering chin
But taste is subject to change
So I subsequently deferred to a bit of brown
Being slim the aim in mind
Pink became the colour of yesteryear’s mistress race
A lick of brown replaced my love heart dress and fear of clowns
Forced to nibble pink
In an exhibition of familial love
I closed my nostrils
And thanked God above
For supplying fish for supper
Awakening Time
Awakening Time
By
Louise M. Hart
In exchange for my mortality
I was sentenced to purgatory
Shunning the luxury of life
I escaped the descent of death
Yielding no being no body
No voice or breath
Today I stand on insentient land
For I would rather be insentient
Than subject to death on demand
O’ children of life I banefully cried
Deserted earth
And parted the sky
And whilst the goddess above
Beckoned my love
The demons below
Seduced my soul
Torment chose their eyes
Hers winked
Like the stars
Above which she knitted
A complicit pattern of survival
Awaiting the world’s arms
Lay a shadow of dreams
Supporting humanity’s potential
For spiritual need
A need forever on the periphery
Like an infinite why
Conceived from the loins of a materialistic lie
And nurtured in the garden of truth
The awakening time is here
This life is queer
My awakening
Time
I am not a Sister’s Poet
She sways through town
5 feet 9 inches tall
And wide
Inside
She is still a child
Her boyfriend nods
On her mountainous back
Of a push bike
Trip to hell
His wheels deflated
By the airy tight force
Of her cutting mouth
She is driven to swell
Him
Beneath
But, he carries no desires
To service a chauffeur
And offers her
No passenger led rides
He is merely on loan to her
Until his use-by date expires
Whilst her skin is as ice is thin
Thoughts dripping
Beneath the frozen veil
Of words that threaten
To betray her
Her actions
Speak louder
Than her
Designer heels of delusion
And she short circuits reality
By reaching for the sky
Clip, clip, clop
She conscientiously navigates
Society’s exclusive upper underbelly
For if she stops, she fears that
Like her punctured bicycle
She will never be remounted
For Iain Duncan Smith, Ode to the Death of Another Benefit Scrounger
I read the news, today
Glasgow writer killed
By the hand
That did not feed him
A suicide statistic
Soon to be forgotten
Like the books
He laboured hard to write
Which no one cares to read
And sitting outside Wetherspoons
Alongside my companionable
Cigarettes and alcohol
I contemplate
The minister of The State
Who one day
Will withdraw
My disability living allowance
Because I can crawl
More than 2 metres
And write
Bloody awful poetry
I am the common word
More Smith
Than Plath
Pretentious enough
To be proud
To be working class
And, suddenly, life seems…
…like perpetual misery
And I become the future statistic
I do not want to be
Meanwhile…
Occupying his inflaming
Twin towers of ivory
Plated over-privilege
And steely mouthed
Prosthetic political power
The star player
In Cameron’s corrupted cabinet
Of party members
Porn players, all
And secretarial back (side)
Slappers
A stabber
Of the foulest form
Opens his whoring mouth
And laughs
Like Lucifer on crack
His Machiavellian throat
Issues sound that even Tony
Bastard bliar, bliar
After dinner speaker tones for hire
Cannot rival
Like a converse Jon Snow
Turned to Tory slush
He is the illegitimate
Legitimate product
Of an ideological game
Of thrones
And human slaughter
United Kingdom
Lock up your sick and disabled
Sons and daughters
Iain Duncan Smith
Is on the hunt
Pheasant is so last season’s
Prey
New labour’s elected
Sunday lunch
Human flesh
Is more appetising
These post-imperialistic
McSalad and fries days
With I.D.S. on my mind
I board the bus home
Grateful to still have money
In my pocket
And no student payback loan
But when I arrive home
I open the door
And staring back at me
From a crimson mat
Is a letter
Marked
Department of Work and Pensions
I take out a blade
And with a frenzied slash
The sullied brown envelop
Bleeds ink
Red as the gash
Adorning my wrist
I tear myself to pieces
Then I light a cigarette
Between
Slices
Of my orange peel fingers tips
Ode to the death of another
Benefit scrounger
Homage to the demise
Of a seated disco dancer
And an inverted snob