Sunday Review

For us, the week began on Tuesday and we published Ruby by Luigi Pagano, a look at the Berlusconi trial and the dancer, Karima El-Mahroug – Ruby Heartstealer. The story was about Ruby who staged a protest outside a court in Italy to deny having paid for sex with Berlusconi. The poem is filled with mixed imagery of a shining jewel and fallen power, and the final line sums it up: ‘The jewel in his crown brought him down.’

On Wednesday we had Shinjini Bhattacharjee’s ICU. It was about a man who admitted to torturing a prostitute in Seattle. The poem was met with favourable and positive reactions at Poetry24 and a favourite of mine. The final two lines were notably memorable: ‘Your vastness shrunk to the size / Of my eyeballs?’

The editors at Poetry24 have been extremely busy and so Thursday was missed, however we published Alcohol is to be Restricted on Friday. Carolyn Cornthwaite’s poem was about Asda welfare cards given to the poor. It was a satirical look at the economy and the status of the poor in the country. ‘Apples and cheery smiles won’t fix our economy.’ Says it all, really.

We decided to publish two poems on Saturday due to the news story of Margaret Thatcher’s death. We had Strike Against the Miners by Andrew John, a poem that seems to remember the pain felt in the country in the 70s. And remembers that ‘She did that.’ And respectively we had Weather Change by Martin Marriott. The poem sounds like a school yard chant with the repetition of ‘Margaret Thatcher’ and expresses how even villains die because of nature.

Hope you all have a good week and are beginning to enjoy the Spring weather.

Michael.

Strike Against the Miners and Weather Change

Strike Against the Miners

Comfortable in their comradeship,

they marched to the pit-head baths,

faces shiny black, teeth gleaming through –

a minstrel show mid-melody.

Their smiles would be evident

in the Miners’ Club later –

some fizzy beer, a bingo game,

talk of blokey things.

No more. The pits are dead,

communities crushed, diffuse.

Secretly, many will rejoice

that she, too, has gone,

she who broke their backs.

How are we to greet the tributes –

oleaginous from friend and foe alike –

glaring from the TV screens?

Do we say good riddance, glad she’s gone?

Or will we sigh and say, “Oh, well,

she did what she believed in”?

Ah, yes. She did that.

© Andrew John

Margaret Thatcher obituary

Andrew John has been writing poems on and off since the 1970s. He recently had the “Poem of the Week” on the Poetry Kit blog www.poetrykit.org and provided one here on Poetry24 in March.

Weather Change

Margaret Thatcher, milk-snatcher

the nice grim reaper at last did catch you

and me and mine all wish you well

in the fiery hell to which you now descend

Margaret Thatcher, global disaster

I smile because I did out-last you

you hated unions, loathed the poor

and supported every wretched war

Margaret Thatcher, vile and mean

porn-star whore of the bourgeois scene

you made the economy really lean

and killed my dad to fulfil your dreams

Margaret Thatcher, no more rhymes

far better fruit for this boy’s mind

I glance outside, it’s no longer snowing

nor cold as hell, which is where you’re going

The sun is out, bright flowers abound

and one evil bitch is underground

and I pray no child conceived today

will ever have to learn your name

Let boss and bureaucrat shed a tear

nature spoke, in the springing of the year.

© Martin Marriott
 

Margaret Thatcher Dead 

Martin Marriott lives a stone's throw from Tottenham Police Station in North London, UK. He is a performance poet and visual artist.

Of Popes and Prelates

A camel and
the eye of a needle
spring to mind when
popes and prelates
don sumptuous finery and
process gaily at
opulent gatherings
to mark their leadership of
those before whom
their Big Man
showed that humility
was the stuff of holiness.

© Andrew John

Eyewitness: Canterbury, UK

Andrew John has been writing poems on and off since the 1970s. He recently had the “Poem of the Week” on the Poetry Kit blog www.poetrykit.org