Taking mother shopping.




A blustery golden day,
as a Ladybird book,
just to have a look,
at the new fifties collection,
in Mr. Marks and Mr. Spencer,
the original pound shop,
about what a luxury sweater,
cost to make in China.

When I was a lad,
she would take me shopping for school clothes,
testing the depth of the woolen, grey short trousers,
in front of the summery store window.

Those who have paid their mortgage,
think the treadmill is good for the unemployed,
talk of their cousin's bells palsy
and the red blood of the aneurism.

2010 cheap G plan,
I'd burn it if I could,
the talk at the next table,
worries about the student riots in London,
mother is made up by them,
thinks their is more to come,
of guns and militia,
anarchists and green socialists,
the butcher, the baker the candlestick maker,
as our prime minister,
begs for a crumb from China's table.

Small babies are being taught to be lower middle class,
I can see the old men in them
and again.

I go in search of mother,
in this huge shed,
a long walk in the dry.

The young veteran,
with a dead child sleeping in his head,
is called to the welfare scroungers adjudication.

After he buys another bottle of cheap vodka,
waits for the brown envelope,
telling him that he is fit for work.

It was all his grandfather got from the jungles of Burma,
an end to love on the dole,
they will force him to pick up litter,
let them eat poppies and cold porridge.

There is a perfect storm coming,
it will break ancient trees like twigs.

~