Lit-zine
JU
Vicky Dee
Gets my goat!
A Southern banker
said to me
unemployment figures
on TV,
“Look at that,
can’t you see?
that's all
those Northern scroungers.”
“They won’t work!”
he said to me,
who hails from,
Southern village twee
picked plum job from
London tree,
he hates
those Northern scroungers.
“Government’s right
to cut their dole,
make them sweat,
take away their homes.
It’s their fault this
country‘s up the pole
serves them right,
those Northern scroungers"
Northern Scroungers
Self Sufficient Psycho
Open organic veggie box, full of wilted leaves
make soggy salad with strange foreign cheese
bought at farmer's market, ten quid a slice,
add hard, homemade bread, ‘mmm it’s so nice.
’Grow your own herbs, plough your own furrow,
thatch your own roof, why not live in a burrow?
Buy some fat geese, or a goat, or a donkey,
cut your hair with a knife, who cares if it’s wonky?
Weave your own carpets, brew your own beer,
eat road kill and rats and shoot your own deer.
Make clothes with skinned squirrels and forage in bins,
home-school the kids, go to ponds for a swim.
Build your own sewer and dig your own drains,
bathe in stagnant water, caught when it rains.
Dance around naked and paint yourself green,
hide in the trees where you cannot be seen.
Carve out a totem pole, slaughter a hen,
stoke up the Agar with the fuel of dead men
who stray into your territory, just before dawn,
your homemade arrow wounds one in the arm.
Then take down the rest, camouflaged as a tree,
hack them to pieces, a nice stew for your tea.
Use their clothes for a curtain, weave their hair into mats,
self sufficiency rocks and you’ll drink blood to that.
They’d turn in their graves
long forgotten,
those Northern industrialists,
of wool and cotton,
created wealth,
rose from the bottom.
Pioneers,
those Northern scroungers.
They’d be ashamed
to hear his sneers
those Northern souls
of work and beer
used and low- paid
down the years.
Grafters,
those Northern scroungers.
Manufacturing rug pulled,
from under’t feet.
even steely nerve
couldn’t keep
that cruel coalface
or shipping fleet
to employ
those Northern scroungers.
So while basking in his
Southern sun
who sewed that cushion,
he's sitting on?
Redundant mills and
rights hard won,
it was
those Northern scroungers.
Vicky Dee was born in Yorkshire before the Internet, but after the War of the Roses.
Before raising a family, she travelled extensively from Paris to Philadelphia and twice round the Birmingham Bull Ring.
But, the lure of the cobbled streets and flat caps drew her back to her original stomping ground. With three teenagers to contend with and running her own business, she gets very little spare time for writing, but much of her work comes under the 'Nowt So Queer As Folk' label.
You can follow Vicky on https://twitter.com/IBVickyD