2016 04 – Social Cleansing (poem)

SOCIAL CLEANSING

 

Up with the drawbridge

down with the portcullis

close the fridge

screw back the top of the coke bottle

to keep in the fizz

they said an Englishman’s home

was his castle

it was something he was entitled to

without any hassle

then came the right-to-buy

and that property-owning

democracy

became the great lie

when speculators became the

autocracy

it’s out of good council areas

and down the road

to a less salubrious area

for your new abode

and maybe even further afield

far out of London to Birmingham

to which you must yield

away from friends and schools

a social pogrom

it’s the slow demise of council

housing

a Mrs Thatcher-Blair hermaphrodite

arousing

with premeditated apologies

at their government’s privatising

methodology.

 

Wilson John Haire.