‘Britain, a country that works for everyone’

‘Britain, a country that works for everyone’

- Theresa May, Prime Minister, July 13 2016

Stephen Smith, age 64,

threw himself at mercy’s door

and found it was locked.

Stephen Smith, seriously ill,

applied for help to pay the bills,

application blocked.

Stephen Smith, human being,

went searching for some fellow feeling,

but found himself knocked

back, by the officer, the supervisor,

the system, and more,

DWP tribunals that

worked out a score 

and told him, while agony seeped through his joints,

and his breathing got worse, that he hadn’t the points,

the points to prove that his life was at risk

cos the score is what matters, it’s the number of ticks;

not the starvation weight, 

it’s the score on the paper that sealed his fate,

fit, they said, to find work with pay,

and don’t let reality get in the way.

So, who’s to blame for the mess?

Esther McVey? Or I.D.S.?

Or some lawmaker who came before,

who made the rules, devised the tests,

but didn’t see the plan would worsen

when applied to a real live person.

Theresa May, 

on the day elected,

told the nation 

she expected

to fight against 

burning injustice,

to make the country 

work for all,

a promise which soon 

became a myth.

And to find out how,

ask Stephen Smith.

© Charlie Lambert

Anger at benefits chiefs who ruled starving six-stone man was 'fit for work'

DWP apologises for telling seriously ill man to find a job

Charlie is a former sports journalist who worked for the Liverpool Echo and the BBC. He began writing poetry in 2016. He lives in Liverpool.

A Criminal Christmas

Advent. The 17thday, and

same as the 16th, and the 15th,

the broad blank corridor betrays

no fingerprints of Christmas,

and even the spartan waiting room,

bleak footfall after the first

security check, offers nothing festive,

merely a Word document printed

black on white, welcoming visitors

to Her Majesty’s Prison.

A jingle, but not of bells,

scraping, but not of snow;

keys linger in locks;

gates, grilles, doors dense in

uniformity swing sullenly, and

suddenly we’re in the chapel.

Well, not much of a chapel.

Cement walls with a cross and

an icon or two, and

fifty men in pale blue t-shirts

and grey trackie bottoms,

men who’ve been ‘approved’.

The chaplain rises. Theme,

Where is God in prison?

Good luck with that one.

God was there in Belsen and Auschwitz,

we’re told. Fifty men in pale blue t-shirts

look unconvinced.

Belsen and Auschwitz.

Not perhaps the best advert

for God’s presence in prison.

Warders tell the men it’s

time to go, back down the

broad, blank corridor

back to work duties,

wings, cells, memories,

guilt, outrage, rivalries,

back to a place

where God has a criminal record,

and Christmas leaves no trace.

© Charlie Lambert

What it’s like to spend Christmas in prison

Charlie Lambert is a former sports broadcaster who began writing poetry in 2016. His work features in the recent anthology of poetry by Cumbrian poets This Place I Know, published by Handstand Press.

Save the Whale?

It was all over Twitter

and local radio had

a ball urging folk to

get down the beach

and save the stranded whale.

And we came, in our

ones and twos and then

our dozens, and soon a small

army was heaving and pushing

to save the stranded whale.

It took us hours, but

wasn’t it worth it! To see

the noble creature slide back

into the surf and know

we’d saved the stranded whale.

So we said our goodbyes

and drifted back to normal

life, and the darkening beach

emptied, and the tide covered the

tracks of the stranded whale

and in the morning the

sun let on the flotsam

and jetsam we rescuers left

behind, the things we

couldn’t help but drop

and didn’t miss,

a hundred and fifteen plastic cups

four plastic bottles

a nylon bag

a thousand other plastic pieces

and one pair of

flipflops,

all tidied up by the

poisoned sea that

doomed the stranded whale.

© Charlie Lambert

Dead whale washes up on Indonesian beach with over 1,000 pieces of plastic in its stomach

Charlie Lambert is a former sports broadcaster who began writing poetry in 2016. His work features in the recent anthology of poetry by Cumbrian poets This Place I Know, published by Handstand Press.

Going Our Separate Ways

So long old buddy,
it's been a blast,
but time moves on
and yours has passed

quite clearly. Sad to
say those in the know
have vetoed you;
it's time to go.

You did your best.
You stood beside
brave men and women
who could have lied

but chose instead
to tell it straight,
take their chance,
resist their fate.

You knew Mandela,
Rosa too,
and Luther King,
inspired by you.

You put to shame
despots who tried
to take the whole world
for a ride.

But now the champion
of the western world,
so reckless with his
use of word,

imagines facts,
dilutes meaning,
subverts sense;
semantics reeling.

A great nation
thinks it's ok
to elect a leader
who speaks this way.

It's a sad time
the world is going through,
so goodbye Truth,
it was so good knowing you.

© Charlie Lambert

The death of truth: how we gave up on facts and ended up with Trump

Charlie Lambert is a former BBC sports correspondent who began writing poetry in 2016. He lives in Liverpool but is originally from Cumbria and his work is to feature in a new collection by Cumbrian poets, 'This Place I Know,' to be published by Handstand Press in the autumn.

It's Not Coming Home...This Time

Buzzword Post-Mortem

On the mortuary slab
This time
There’ll be no
Club v country
Pride v ego
Wherever he goes
So does me go
Ticky tacky jealousies
From tabloid bottom feeders
Why can’t we practice penalties?
Where were all the leaders?
Paid too much
Cared too little
Daft haircuts and
Stupid cards
Not this time
Just
Unlucky lads

© Mark Coverdale

World Cup 2018: Despair as England lose semi-final

Mark Coverdale Art School Mod Poet. Born in Darlington the year Elvis died. Now in London via Oldham writing and performing socially and politically observational poetry. Twitter: @cov_art

Mirage

I stepped out of my home of thirty years

into a landscape transformed.

My postcode had changed colour.

Gone the cement grey

and the downbeat drab of everyday;

instead,

all red,

and silver white

on flags and banners

that held the light;

hanging from windows, shopfronts, bus-stops,

catching the breeze, and turning streets aglow,

even on top of the old folks bungalow.

It’s the World Cup semi-final.

But tomorrow, what world will I enter

from my home of thirty years?

A place of carnival and celebration,

or one of bleak confusion,

broken dreams and disillusion,

again the home

of monochrome,

flags and banners with no real purpose

sent packing with

the other surplus,

stowed in loft and shed and bin,

the land transformed the old-style way

as if there’d been no red-letter day?

© Charlie Lambert

England lost but there are reasons to be cheerful

Charlie Lambert is a former BBC sports correspondent who began writing poetry in 2016. He lives in Liverpool but is originally from Cumbria and his work is to feature in a new collection by Cumbrian poets, 'This Place I Know,' to be published by Handstand Press in the autumn.

Wordsworth’s Revenge

It’s led the way from hell to heaven
each day since 1847,
bringing folk from far and near
to Oxenholme and Windermere.

But no trains move along the track
that runs through Burneside and back;
instead of views from Orrest Head
the scene’s a signal, stuck on red.

Wordsworth’s laughing in his grave.
The rustic peace he strove to save
is back; despite the money, bold intentions,
‘romance of nature’ has ‘baffled’ inventions,

and what he called ‘paternal fields’
are spared the beats of drumming wheels,
while here and now, surprisingly,
the track’s the safest place to be.

One hundred years and seventy-one
the trains have done their job and run
through hills to see the lake appear,
from Oxenholme to Windermere,

until this time. All the gizmos, fancy plans,
applied in vain by modern man.
Victorians would not permit the fail
Of 2018 Northern Rail.

© Charlie Lambert

Northern breaks promise as it tries to extend closure of Lakes Line

Charlie Lambert was born in Windermere and has travelled the line to Oxenholme many times. He now lives in Liverpool.

William Wordsworth was a strong campaigner against the proposal to build a rail link to the Lake District, writing a series of articles as well as the poem 'Kendal and Windermere Railway: Sonnet' available at https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/kendal-and-windermere-railway-sonnet-from-the-carlisle-journal

Thames Tide

Thames
tide
tows
a legacy
upstream,
draws
decades
into focus.

Tilbury’s
compass
charts
a course of
seventy years,
Windrush wake
tracking to Westminster bridge.

Mother of parliaments,
home of democracy,
hypocrisy,
assaults
its
own
people:
Douma without chemicals,
Gaza without bullets,
Myanmar with no arson:
attacks
its
own
people.

Tilbury
tide tows
truth
upstream,
silt and slime
washed clean
exposes
decay.

© Charlie Lambert

Amber Rudd resigns hours after Guardian publishes deportation targets letter

Charlie Lambert is a former sports journalst and broadcaster who began writing poetry in 2016. He is a member of the Liverpool Dead Good Poets Society and can usually be found at their metings on the first Wednesday of the month at Blackburne House in Liverpool.

Spring Equinox

Winter

has hung around too long, too long

this year.

Like a busted flush of government,

what looked bright and clear

once

has morphed into dull chill of

despair.

The worst days have names:

Storm Emma,

the Beast from the East,

like a porn star spewing bad curry.

The 21st century whisks serious news into

PR spin

and layers of thin ice creak and crack

and scare.

Today,

a sparrow chirps brightly,

and a black-headed gull really does

sport black on his head, his summer colour,

after winter white.

Catkins wink from rejuvenated birch,

and just for a moment,

spring

is in the air.

© Charlie Lambert

Spring equinox 2018: it's official, winter is over – despite the snow

Charlie Lambert is a former journalist and sports broadcaster who turned to a different form of media in 2016 when he started writing poetry. He lives in Liverpool.

Word-adept

Charlie Lambert recently wrote the following poem, 'Gun-Adept' which was published in the In Brief... section.
'Word-adept', as Charlie put it, "seemed the logical follow-up."

Gun-Adept

I've trained for my mission.

Checked my guns, my ammunition,
scouted the entrance, the classrooms, the hall,
planned my escape round the swimming pool wall.
Reviewed all the details to every last feature.
So first to die must now be the teacher.

© Charlie Lambert

Trump's solution to school shootings: arm teachers with guns

Word-adept

It’s not my fault this poem’s so bad,

it’s the adjectives that drive me mad.

I just find words to pepper my book

like bullets from Parkland or Sandy Hook.

The President knows just who to blame.

He’s learned his script, takes careful aim:

mental illness, he tells the camera,

and the FBI for getting it wrong,

and the armed guard who didn’t stay long,

and it isn’t my fault I am a

writer of words which aren’t always

under control.

Today I’m advertising across the nation.

I’m setting up the National Word Association.

Its constitution I’m going to write

to give all folk the sacred right

to carry words about their person,

and use them should the story worsen.

The second amendment will guarantee

whole sentences spouting liberty,

free to wound the good, or idle,

and get repealed the laws of libel.

With rapid-action bumpstock chatter,

true or not, it doesn’t matter,

the President conducts the crowd

of sycophants and thinks aloud

of all the things he’s done to date

that in his head make America great.

And the National Word Association’s there

to guard him should he curse or swear.

We’ll give the senators a million bucks

to stop the guy who says it sucks

to fire vocabulary at innocent targets -

not bribes, just our natural largesse.

The NWA will check you’ve seen

both ways to use a magazine,

syllables pumped up to fire,

spike counts reading ever higher,

verbs, nouns, smart effects,

all on sale with no real checks.

Illiterates welcome at our shop,

A horror tale with no full stop.

© Charlie Lambert

NRA calls companies' Florida shooting boycott 'political and civic cowardice'

Charlie Lambert is a former journalist and sports broadcaster who turned to a different form of media in 2016 when he started writing poetry. He lives in Liverpool.

Vital Signs of Our Time

Political health

Theresa and Jeremy turn up at the oz.

Two more in the queue - well, the queue that once was.

Today it's a scrum, a melee, a crowd,

Sick people on trolleys, or waiting outside.

Alerted for months, predicted for years -

Where's the prescription for crocodile tears?

© Charlie Lambert

Theresa May changes tack to apologise for postponed operations

Charlie Lambert is a former journalist and sports broadcaster who turned to a different form of media in 2016 when he started writing poetry. He lives in Liverpool, where the hospital is known universally as 'the oz'.



Pandemic

That strain again, it had a dying fall.
            Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

Poetry mutates like flu: a core of purpose
embedded in an ever-changing surface.

Milton decried the modern bondage of rimeing.
So many ways with words have died through time.

Mostly we’re immune from art, resistant
or silently infected, jingle-listening: coexistent,

but when disease ensues it may be serious,
casualties often become obsessed, delirious

and secondary infections may present:

poetry voice, slam stance or olde inversion (not so quaint).

Or perhaps poetry is more like chicken pox or shingles?

Once caught it’s integrated, for ever part of us that lingers.

Where this metaphor breaks down is in who suffers most,

an infected victim or those close to an afflicted host?

© Myfanwy Fox

What is Australian flu? How to prevent the virus and the symptoms to look out for

Myfanwy Fox has had a weird life and would like to make yours weirder, too. She occasionally blogs at Fox Unkennelled

Christmas sonnet, 2017

I saw no Christmas in September

when adverts appeared in the shops.

I saw no Christmas in Lapland

with the snow and the ice in retreat.

I saw no Christmas in the White House

where goodwill to all is fake news.

I saw no Christmas in the ocean

where three ships sailed by made of plastic.

I saw no Christmas in Yemen

where innocents are slain by a king.

I saw no Christmas in Bethlehem

where the star that means peace slowly dies.

I feared I would see no Christmas at all

till it shone in my granddaughters' eyes.

© Charlie Lambert

Charlie Lambert is a former journalist and sports broadcaster who turned to a different form of media in 2016 when he started writing poetry. He lives in Liverpool.

Day of Reckoning

I watched the sun go down

from a beach strewn with driftwood.

A chap with a tripod

fixed his camera and

prayed that no-one would

walk into his shot. It was

that kind of sunset.

People began to appear from

walkways and sidestreets,

like folk assembling for a

firework do, or New Year’s Eve

in Liverpool as the clock

counts down; forty or fifty waiting

for the sun to go down.

But the sun doesn’t go down,

it never does, it simply

moves on. Moves on from here,

New Zealand’s western shore, first place

each day to show its hand,

moves on to check what gives

around the corner.

I followed the dip of the disc

and as darkness lapped the edge

of the beach and the man with the

camera packed up his kit, I felt

the sun steel itself for its

American shift: difficult task,

but someone has to do it.

And I wondered what the sun

would light on this time around,

and how the coming day would be

recorded in the log:

stars aligned, stripes formed up?

Dawn lighting early?

Banner yet waving?

Or must we pluck up courage

to inspect this poll to say

who’ll lead the human tribe? Like

turning up for the specialist’s verdict:

malignant, or not? Either way

self-inflicted, too late to

live again now.

Darkness on the beach. No golden postscript

tonight, and the waves

hammer grimly on the unlit shingle.

Driftwood sculptures stand stark and grotesque,

fear infiltrates the senses, and

cold winds whisper through the sands:

Prognosis uncertain, it’s out of our hands.

© Charlie Lambert

Election anniversary: Captain Trump steers nation into turbulence

Charlie Lambert is a former sports journalist who began writing poetry in 2016. He is among a group of poets who have contributed to the anthology in support of human rights, 'Write to be Counted', published in October by the Book Mill. He lives in Liverpool, England.

Poetry to Die For

If I could choose my death

it’d be Pablo Neruda’s death.

Poisoned by two hitmen dressed

as medics because my poetry

upset the chief.

If I could choose my writing

it’d be Pablo Neruda’s writing.

Not just for the Nobel prize

or the best poem ever

about a cat

Not just for the passion,

the love, or the way he

inspired the working man,

but because he shamed a dictator

with his pen.

If I could pierce a junta’s defences using

words that live decades longer

than military rule, then

I’d be happy to write

a poem to die for.

© Charlie Lambert

Researchers raise doubts over cause of Chilean poet Neruda's death

Charlie Lambert is a former journalist and sports broadcaster who turned to a different form of media in 2016 when he started writing poetry. He is among a group of poets who have contributed to the anthology in support of human rights, 'Write to be Counted', published this month by the Book Mill. He lives in Liverpool.

A Dead Sirte

Once we've cleared the bodies

Once we've dug the graves

And found a space where

Graves aren't already dug

Which won't be easy

Once we've done the digging

Which won't be easy

When the earth's like concrete

And the sun's like glass

And it's mass graves we're digging

Once we've steeled ourselves to the

Mosaic mess of mutilation and said a prayer

Which won't be easy

For we don't know who the bodies

And the body parts belonged to

Once we've finished with the shovels

We can hand over to Boris's

Bright British guys who can't wait

To build a steel glass and concrete

City with mosaics and open space

And water fountains and terrazzas,

Beaches with better sand than ours

Maybe a Formula One race one day

And of course a tasteful memorial

To all the bodies who were people once.

© Charlie Lambert

No 10 rebukes Boris Johnson over Sirte 'dead bodies' comment

Charlie Lambert is a former journalist and sports broadcaster who turned to a different form of media in 2016 when he started writing poetry. He lives in Liverpool.

Autumn Equinox

The sky above my house is blue,

Timeless, dateless blue that

Beckons, urges, demands

Me to surrender.

I stare above the walls,

The gates with rust encroaching,

The pots of hard-pressed flowers,

To blue sucking me upward.

Thin clouds stretch and bask

In sun-sent rays and daytime

Sky smiles like a lover

Knowing beyond lie mysteries of stars.

I am there. The earth’s truest

Beauty is above the earth,

Calling me upward on this

Rare day of balance, calling me

Up to the infinity of blue.

No earthquake, no tempest,

No hatred, no cancer, no pain.

My spirit soars, is free.

© Charlie Lambert

Say goodbye to summer as sun passes over equator marking first day of autumn

Charlie Lambert is a former journalist and sports broadcaster who turned to a different form of media in 2016 when he started writing poetry. He lives in Liverpool.

National Disgrace

Don’t worry about

Cutting corners. We’re Brits,

It’s what we do.

Fill in a form,

No problem, we’ll simply

Wave it through.

Details? They’re like

Taxes, for fools,

Not me and you.

Don’t worry about

Cutting corners. We’re Brits,

It’s what we do.

Titanic looked fantastic,

Cost a vast amount.

Too bad that no-one noticed

Sub-standard lifeboat count.

The Coal Board said don’t worry,

Don’t listen to the man

Who says the tip’s unstable, too

Close to Aberfan.

We’ll have a game of football,

Get the Scousers to attend.

Win, lose or draw they’ll be just fine

On Leppings Lane End.

Don’t worry about

Cutting corners. We’re Brits,

It’s what we do.

Don’t look across the city,

I wouldn’t if I were you.

That tower block is ghastly,

Burned out, it spoils the view.

They say some people saved some cash

And nodded fire tests through,

But the truth old boy is that we’re Brits,

And this is what we do.

© Charlie Lambert

Grenfell Tower: 'Twenty suicide attempts' since fire

Charlie Lambert is a former journalist and sports broadcaster who turned to a different form of media in 2016 when he started writing poetry. He lives in Liverpool. Click HERE out more about Charlie.