Happy NaPoWriMo!
Anyone first visiting my sight today, I’m actually part way through a longer project where I write poems for 100 days every year. Take a look at my older posts or my about page if you want to find out more. This year I’m using news stories as prompts. I’m British, so there’s something of a bias toward UK news sources.
I’m also a lefty-radical apathetic-anarchist slacker-punk queer so, you know, that may come across at times.
Enjoy!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9964767/Iain-Duncan-Smith-I-could-live-on-53-per-week.html
This poem is a bit of a weird lateral leap from the news story. It’s about the more general idea of the rich and privileged thinking that it must be easy to be poor.
A rich little boy
Takes a bath in baked beans
To raise money for the starving.
Look at me, he cries
I can undergo this discomfort
For half an hour.
And the coins roll in
For the brave little boy.
In his bath full of beans.
I can cope with hardship
He thinks, in his savoury smelling tub,
Cold beans sliding around him like frogspawn:
A nice warm desert
And tasty handouts of grain
Must be easier far
Than this noble ordeal.
So at the end of the day
When he rises, dripping dark orange
Sauce on the floor
To a round of applause
And runs to a hot soapy shower
He decides after all
To keep the sponsorship money:
There’s none more deserving than he.
The gallons of beans are discarded:
They’re no good to anyone now.
Tom Juniper Poetry 