Bored Games

Like kids playing draughts,

Theresa hit an impasse.

Move the king forward.

Move the king back.

Move the king forward.

Move the king back.

Move the king forw…

Bercow flips his lid.

He cannot stand the entropy.

We cheer as he challenges her

pig-headed strategy

of grinding down the House until the last opportunity

dies on its repetitious arse. 

Theresa isn’t happy.

She can’t see the irony, savage though it is,

of the government voting on the same sodding deal

as the first, while denying us

our own possibility.

Move the king forward.

Move the king back.

Move the king forward.

Move the king back.

Move the king …

ORDER! Theresa! 

You’re not allowed to do that!               

                     

She’s sulking now, considering 

cut and paste, Comic Sans,

digging him a shallow grave,

buying in a better deal,

writing it in red and green 

felt-tip. 

Perhaps a Reggie Perrin?

Riding in a time machine,

telling bigger porky pies,

resigning?

Or simply just ignoring him

and ploughing on regardless.

Now which of you buggers is up for playing Chess?

© Laura Taylor

Third Brexit vote must be different - Speaker

Laura Taylor -  [Facebook: Laura Taylor] [WriteOutLoud]

Laura believes in the power of poetry as a means by which silent voices speak and hidden ears listen. Flapjack Press.

The Propaganda Panda and the Autocratic Cat

The Propaganda Panda and the Autocratic Cat

took a trip around the world in a new Learjet.

Champagne for breakfast and caviar for tea;

when recession hit, lived a life of luxury.

Within a double-dip, lived a life of luxury.

Everything on credit,

no money was required;

mortgaged off the pea-green boat,

sold it short ten times,

creating first world problems

of a global crisis kind

and when it came to pass

that the economy was fucked,

they developed Teflon shoulders

and tried to pass the buck

onto all the working people

whose pay was less each day,

then took away their benefits

while giving bankers bonuses,

forced the unemployed onto Workfare schemes

and didn’t give a toss about the Bong-tree lands,

just plunged them into ever-deeper debt,

deeper debt,

just plunged them into ever-deeper debt.

© Laura Taylor

Lehman Brothers went bust 10 years ago – can it happen again?

Laura Taylor believes in the power of poetry as a means by which silent voices speak and hidden ears listen. Flapjack Press. Facebook.

3:15 am (tunnel vision)

3:15, legs and sweat, 1997

tangled hands and black-eyed lust

smoke break interrupted

ears pricked, heads dipped

a heap of limbs in parody

four of us can say for sure

what we were doing then

when Henri Paul lost control

in Pont de l'Alma tunnel

and pixellated puckered tin

bathed bodies in the flicker

and a nation woke and mourned

while we just necked another

and dilated, changed the channel over

CHOON!

© Laura Taylor

Prince Harry 'very glad' to walk behind Diana's coffin

Princes William and Harry speak about 'complete numbness and disbelief' at Princess Diana's death

Laura Taylor believes in the power of poetry as a means by which silent voices speak and hidden ears listen. Flapjack Press. Facebook.

Just The One

Fifty seven accusations.
Fifty seven lies.
Fifty seven secret pleasures.
Fifty seven stolen lives.

Fifty seven invitations.
Fifty seven spiders waiting.
Fifty seven true intentions.
Fifty seven parlours entered.

Fifty seven aggravations.
Fifty seven silent gains.
Fifty seven violations.
Fifty seven acts of shame.

Fifty seven allegations.
Fifty seven sick occasions.
Fifty seven vindications.
Just the one conviction
of the living definition of misogyny.

© Laura Taylor

Bill Cosby found guilty in sexual assault trial in milestone for #MeToo era 

Laura Taylor is a regular festival and open-mic night guest performer throughout the North West of England. She has been writing and performing poetry for six years, and has been widely published. Obsessed with words and language since her early childhood, Laura believes in the power of poetry as a means by which silent voices speak and hidden ears listen.

Subjects of Denial

My hair is clean and brushed and smart.

Hers is drenched and dirty.

I am wearing cosy clothes.

She is bare and purple.

I'm inhaling bluebell air.

She is breathing fire.

I am watching pixellated subjects of denial.

I am strong and tall, unbowed.

She is weak and wailing.

I am fifty years of age.

She is but a baby.

I have biscuits on my lips.

She has froth and horror.

I am watching pixellated subjects of atrocity.

I have eyes that blur and leak

but I am speaking freely.

She has eyes that cannot see.

She is wheezing frantically.

I am hearing grown men lie.

She is hearing people die.

I am watching pixellated subjects of denial.

© Laura Taylor

Syria conflict: Russia says no evidence of Douma chemical attack

Laura Taylor has been obsessed with words and language since her early childhood. She believes in the power of poetry as a means by which silent voices speak and hidden ears listen.

A Little Less Trouble For The State

One less little Lithuanian,

a little less trouble for the state.

No need to bother with interpreters,

it doesn't really matter what he says.

Locked away, stuck in isolation,

for the major crime of pilfering sweets.

Found five times in a suicidal way

but at least he's not free to roam the streets.

37 minutes ticked by,

the bell was rung, ignored, and rung again.

An accidental death is "appalling",

but a little less trouble for the state.

Prison is a "challenging experience",

said the minister for prisons, afterwards;

"it is clear there were failings in the management"

and valuable lessons have been learned.

Were the 37 minutes accidental?

Was ignoring all the cries for help a fluke?

Did they think his suicide was unintentional?

A coincidental hanging by the neck?

The investigation's over now, it's "tragic",

and they'll never make the same "mistake" again.

But there's one less little Lithuanian,

and a little less trouble for the state.

© Laura Taylor

Ombudsman: teenager's death in Wandsworth prison 'appalling'

Laura Taylor has been obsessed with words and language since her early childhood, and believes in the power of poetry as a means by which silent voices speak and hidden ears listen.

https://www.writeoutloud.net/profiles/laurataylor

Cash Flow Fiasco

Shares fall,

brought low;

lying little Tesco.

Top guys?

Porky pies!

Jackanory stats.

Imaginary futures,

greedy little…

Tesco, uh oh!

Pants on fire.

Tongues as long as a telephone wire.

Cashflow fiasco;

Pinocchio noses.

Standardised carrot size?

Shove it

where the sun don’t…

Tesco swing low,

all fall down.

All the credibility

of third rate clowns.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29735685

Strident yet curiously engaging, Laura Taylor is a gobby Northerner with a penchant for upsetting apple carts, and she never knows quite when to shut up.

Commodities

Not old enough to vote or wed

or give consent,

but old enough to be transferred                   

by men to men;

possessed.

Not old enough to drive a car,

have overdrafts or credit cards,

but old enough to be exchanged;

expended;

property.

Not old enough to live alone or own a home,

but old enough to be deceived;

to be perceived as third and fourth class citizens,

as damaged goods and chattel;

to be consumed

and spent.

Not old enough to get a job, leave school,

or give consent,

but old enough to be consigned

by men to men.

Possessed.

Child sexual exploitation in Rotherham.

©Laura Taylor

Laura Taylor has been writing and performing poetry since 2010, and loathes injustice to the core of her being. http://www.writeoutloud.net/profiles/laurataylor

Judging Justin

The net drips contempt

for a chicken

tied to sing in his teens;

from nothing out of nowhere,

unaware and unprepared.

Damaged

by the jagged

little splinters

made of gilt.

Contractually paid to play,

and play;

to play,

and play

again;

to make the pay his mother never could.

Brains of Braun - chicken pawn

can’t feel a silence of the mind

to rest,

recuperate.

Never to decelerate.

Atoms of his sanity exploding on TV.

Spiralling, signalling,

resisting, somersaulting.

Stripped by the media;

consumed, commodified,

dehumanised, and vilified.

This neverland will never last;

wishes made of dollars never do.

Take the plank from your eye -

a chicken speck of sawdust

costs a fortune,

lasts a lifetime,

narrows all of his tomorrows

fit to slide inside a bottle-necked fate.

Justin Beiber charged with limo driver assault

© Laura Taylor

Laura Taylor bangs her head repeatedly against various walls. Luckily, she has a very hard head.

http://www.writeoutloud.net/profiles/laura

'No Justice'

Concluding a tissue of lies,

his life resides in a box;

confined, entrapped,

determined, defined

by discourse,

perverse.

No Peace.

©Laura Taylor

Mark Duggan's family furious at inquest verdict

http://dugganinquest.independent.gov.uk/docs/Jurys_Determination_and_Conclusion.pdf

Laura Taylor has been writing and performing poetry for over 3 years, and gets angrier by the day.

http://www.writeoutloud.net/profiles/laura

McGarrigle’s Glasgow

One of the scribes was taken tonight.

One of the seers, one of our own.

One of the prophets will write no more lines

in radical rhymes

nor preach them to people like us.

He struggled against his emptying days,

though yearned for contentment and calm.

Thought he had lost that angry young man,

but McGarrigle – words never die;

they’re beyond a stillness of pulse.

You spoke of a Glasgow unknown to the rich,

of the Cross, of a town built on sweat.

In the Clutha, the Scotia, the folk and the verse -

dance of the underdog, lies of the land –

were given a life in tune to your truth.

Tonight in a town made of working-class gold,

in the midst of McGarrigle’s Glasgow -

the artists and players, singers and sculptors,

poets and prophets and pipers and drummers

remember the heat of your heart;

raise their glass to the fire within.

May your flame spark gently in unsurpassed sunset tonight.

Laura Taylor

Glasgow helicopter crash claims poet's life. 

Laura Taylor just wanted to commemorate a fellow working-class poet.

Write outloud.is Laura's web home

Assembly

Late September, summershine,

fifty thousand pair of feet

hit the streets of Manchester;

Assembly of the People

come to call on Cameron.

Come to cry, come to shout,

from Inverness to Somerset.

Fifty thousand mouths assault

the air in Oxford Road,

to stop the cuts today, to say

We did not give permission to sell the Welfare State.

The spirit of Joe Hill flew in

the flags of solidarity,

in cries to trample down the dirt -

the great lie of austerity;

to stop the cuts today, to say

We did not give permission to sell the NHS.

With whistles and rattles

and clapping of hands,

PCS samba band,

children in prams,

bubbles in sunshine

and rainbows in clouds,

we played the drum slowly to march.

I swear that Shelley was with us today,

his eloquence heating our heads.

And I thought of the few,

and the country they sold.

And we beat the drum faster to march

Then as we turned the corner

into Lower Mosley Street,

the air grew thick and shimmered

with the litany of protest.

The ring of steel and batons,

the string of London Guns,

told us they were in there

and could hear the many roar.

We opened up collective mouths,

let grievance leave our lungs.

NO to constant cuts and caps,

to taxes on the poor!

NO to non-stop brutal chops

and private profiteers!

NO to blood-stained ATOS hands

and working for your dole!

NO to ConDem Nation,

to devastating lives!

The right wing rags ignored the sound

of fifty thousand pair of feet,

of fifty thousand voices

calling Tories on their lies.

They see no, hear no, speak no truth,

so silence and blank pages

censored mention of assembly;

betrayed responsibility.

And though we did not change the world

or overthrow the government,

we demonstrated opposition;

flagged up our resistance.

We showed a strength of unity,

community and care.

Sharpened our collective teeth,

gave succour to our souls.

And on this sunny Sunday,

late September,

Manchester,

we remembered Shelley

‘Ye are many - they are few’.

© Laura Taylor

50,000 march in NHS cuts protest in Manchester
The Peterloo Massacre

Laura Taylor has been writing and performing poetry for 3 years, and has lost control of the brakes.

http://www.writeoutloud.net/profiles/laura

Upgrade

  

in the third month

the water rose

and fell upon the land

300 tonnes came later

as an angel blew to warn

of oceanic bitterness                                                                          

will a great star fall from heaven?

did we miss it?

is it here?

a wormwood wasting Fukushima

waits on level 3

© Laura Taylor

Japanese nuclear agency upgrades Fukushima alert level

Laura Taylor has been writing and performing poetry for nearly 3 years, and has lost control of the brakes.

http://www.writeoutloud.net/profiles/laura

Regal Potential

The world awaits, the headlines scream,
the herd awaits in dead-eyed glee.
She is delivered;
the future King.
A boy of promise,
accident,
a common egg, sovereign seed, an ovary to spark a life, a womb to breed a parasite?

When you grow up to be a man, will you reject the riches tumbled to your lap?

Will you refuse the unjust state of monarchistic privilege, or take the weight of Empire’s stains upon your regal head?

Will you renounce this sceptered gold to overthrow a system put in place by death and robbery?

Open wide the highborn doors and distribute the spoils?
Lift children out of poverty, give dignity to age?

Or learn to wave and smile just so and take for granted all your life

free from hunger, homelessness, redundancy or debt?

You could right so many wrongs, replace ‘what is’ with ‘what could be.’ Free your soul

from purgatory, change the face of history, spit on tainted luxury, become a man

of liberty, equality and peace.

You have potential.
We shall see.

© Laura Taylor

Royal baby: Messages of congratulations flood in after birth

Laura Taylor has been writing and performing poetry for nearly three years and has finally found a space in which to air her grievances with authority.
www.writeoutloud.net/profiles/laura

Note: 'She is delivered' was quoted from the Today programme 22/7/13

Dear Margaret

For Orgreave, the Beanfield, and Hillsborough.
For Operation Swamp 81.
For the miners, the unions,
the working class heroes,
the people whose skin you denied.
For the innocents turned into criminals.
For giving the Force a free rein.
to wield batons and tear gas and horses,
to weaken and batter them all.

For the families who died.
For the lies you allowed to be told
all this time, not giving an ounce
of the truth or of justice for this ‘96.
For the mass destruction of all our communities,
psyches and spirits and faith.

For my dad, ex-Services, thrown on the dole
fifteen times in as many long months.

For my mother, dug deeper in poor mental health;
the poverty making her sicker, and sadder,
and madder than she’d ever been.

For my brother, who lived without wages for years, burned out
on a pyre of your making.

For the youth of myself, for the public disgrace
of the free-dinner-queue, for the old cast-off shoes,
for none of the school trips or cookery lessons,
for shrinking grey socks, for the punches and kicks
that my mother let fly in her madness.
For the ice and the mould inside every window.
For the hunger, the shame, my family’s pain,
for the living we scraped hand to mouth.

For all the above, for all our lost years,
for all of the grief and the depths that we reached.
Dear Margaret
there’s no absolution,
no forgiveness, or pity or grief.
Your legacy lives in the fat of the rich.
May your soul never find any peace.

© Laura Taylor

Margaret Thatcher Dead

Laura Taylor has been writing and performing poetry for just over two years, and has finally found a space in which to air her grievances with Authority.

http://www.writeoutloud.net/profiles/laura

 

Jack's Alright

Alright Jack? And how are you today?
Any propaganda to repeat?
No red-top headlines, green-inked bile,
that you’d like to regurgitate for me?
I’m all ears for your misplaced fears,
for the glowing generalities that glitter when you speak
for the bandwagon slander littering your speech

What about the ‘scroungers’ who live across the street?
The ones with the Blackberry and Sky TV?
Living off your taxes, lying on their backs,
according to the gospel of the right-wing rags.
If it’s in the papers then it’s obviously true!

You’re a hard-working family, a ‘striver’ to be sure,
and the ‘shirkers’ over there, they earn 20k a year!
Jack, you know it doesn’t go into their  pauper’s purse
The landlord gets the benefit, and they live on a pittance,
deflating by the day to bleed them dry

They lost their jobs a year ago, and now they’re on their arse bones,
feeding from the food banks funded by the network
of Tory boys and greedy chums with crafty plans ahoy

But there isn’t any bread, and there’s no fresh veg,
no milk or meat or dignity to dine on
Their Sky TV was cut off but the dish remains in place
‘cause Murdoch can’t be arsed to take it down
And the Blackberry? It’s dead, without a dime to call the time

But don’t let this impede the yellow mantra you repeat
as a talisman against redundancy
Just close your ears and shut your eyes
and pray your acts of Daily Fail
will help you stay a ‘striver’ all your life

God forbid you lose your foot upon the rung

© Laura Taylor

Wage war on shirkers

Laura Taylor has been writing and performing poetry for just over two years and has finally found a space in which to air her grievances with Authority. Her Writeoutloud profile is http://www.writeoutloud.net/profiles/laura

Smart Card Shopping Fest

It’s a Smart Card shopping fest
No frittering of benefits
on booze and lovely cigarettes
No choice no voice
No clubcard points
It’s credit in reverse
again                                                                                                 

Unfantastic this new plastic
Technically illegal
That won’t stop the government
from ploughing through
the bank accounts
that don’t belong to them
again                                                                                                 

‘You’re a problem family,
draining the economy,
ruining the country
with your drug-addicted ways
Yes we know you didn’t start it all
nor did you have a part
in continuing the dive into the shitter
But frittering your benefits
on booze and lovely cigarettes
makes the Daily Mailers apoplectic
And now we have to make a point
so rather than claim taxes due
we’ll drain the blood from poor people
again’                                                                                                

When shopping list autonomy
becomes a thing of history
I suggest we shoplift all we need
and then
no more Smart Card shopping fest
We’ll smuggle all our cigarettes
and sup our booze within the Tesco aisles
No choice no voice
No clubcard points
But all the paupers will rejoice
and luxury will come to us for free   
Oh yes

©  Laura Taylor

  'No booze' smart cards for benefit claimants who spend their handouts on drugs and alcohol

Award-winning poet Laura Taylor is a regular festival and open-mic night guest performer throughout the North West of England. She has been writing and performing poetry for two years, and has been widely published.