Her Upstairs
by A P Staunton

She don’t like change, it makes her anxious,
All the things her tablets are for,
Mirtazapine, Gabapentin, Sertraline,
£80 a week to look after her.
Climb the stairs with toast and poached egg,
Up all night as she shouts at the voices 
Going round and round inside her head,
“Not really a disability,” “Lifestyle choices“
Rails round the toilet, seat in the bath,
“Look what we have given you —
Help with your rent, council tax,
An upstairs room with a city centre view”
Forms to fill, I have to help her,
How high can you lift your arms? How far can you walk?
Are you computer literate? It’ll come in handy,
Can you use a knife and a fork?
I expected no less from the Tories,
Separating the fit from the runts,
But from a party for the many not a few?
What a bunch of duplicitous c***s.

A P Staunton has won poetry slams and represented Brighton at the Albert Hall finals.

Don't you see?
by Ruby Bartlett

Don’t you see, my life isn’t just one big policy

A budget cut you say, why don’t you say 
you want to kill disabled people and call it a day?

Dramatic, right? Tell that to the 50 that lost their fight.

You say PIP is a luxury?
What about your concerts, football games and parties? Freebies all paid for you. 
I guess they forgot to mention that too.

£121 Billion spent on war
Yet you come knocking on the disabled’s door

Should I put you on a stand?
I will judge you on the way you walk, the way you talk, 
the way you sleep, the way you eat.

If this is about getting us back into work?
Don’t be acting like we all drive around in a brand new mercs

Find me a job
And stop pretending we are all slobs
Unlike your mob, who definitely get their heating expenses paid.

Cutting costs and not even thinking about the lives that could be lost.

It’s not my fault life has me this way
I just want to keep my health costs at bay

Look at your people
Instead of hanging them out to dry on your biggest steeple

We are the lives you push away
But we will keep fighting anyway

Now don’t you see
My life isn’t one big policy

Ruby Bartlett is a final year Drama and Theatre student in Liverpool, and a full time wheelchair user

PIP
by Jack Clarke

PIP makes it dark, like when the leccy runs out,
like mam’s back locked up but they still made her sign on,
like grandad’s hands, stiff from years on the yard,
like the ants in the walls, marchin’, marchin’, unseen.

Council house cold, where the bog never flushed,
where we learned young that nothin’ stays, not even brick,
where the dole sent letters that twisted guts worse than hunger,
where work was a ghost, and debt knocked louder.

Nan’s bones grind, still they make her walk,
uncle’s scarred belly, still they call him fit,
the SS doctors ask why they can’t graft,
PIP makes it dark, like when the leccy runs out.

Jack is a Salford-born producer, curator, and writer with a background in film, radio, and TV. His work spanning indie film, journalism, and curation focuses on breaking down cultural barriers and amplifying working-class voices.

Arbeit
by Nick Moss

We protected working people
The Labour Party is the party of work

The shadowplay sleight of hand,
The “Now you see it, now you don’t”
Slip from dented shield
To Capital’s enforcer

A government not stepping back, but stepping up 

Careless. Caring-less. Couldn’t care less
The £5 billion heist.
No gloves, no bally.
In plain sight.
Running round Parliament Square
Shouting “Gang, gang, gang, gang”

I fixed the foundations of our economy to deliver on the promise of change 

Streeting and Farage vie for places
On the reinstated Lunacy Commission,
Lips wet at the opportunity
To scourge all the over diagnosed
Pretenders to pauperism,
With a new slogan for a new era —
“Codify everyone who asketh of thee”.
Discipline. The management
And manipulation of poverty.
The social democrat’s rancorous suspicion of the poor.

We’re not the party of people on benefits.
We’re not the party to represent those out of work

Fitting scold’s bridles to single parents
To stifle their whinings of penurious despondency.

The big savings to be had are by tackling the root causes of the benefits bill

The days are gone when work was seen
For what it was —
A dominion over
(And robbery of) the working class.
So submit to the grind
There are too many shirkers and scroungers,
And they are given too much and live too long
Arbeit, only arbeit… for the likes of us.
Arbeit. Always.

Promises made…promises kept

Quotations from the Spring Statement, 2025, as delivered by Chancellor Rachel Reeves; Keir Starmer, The Times March 18 2025; Rachel Reeves, The Guardian March 17 2015

Nick Moss is an ex-prisoner, published poet, reviewer and playwright. Poetry collections: Swear Down (Smokestack Books, 2021) and Shooting to Kill (Culture Matters, 2024)

Anxiety
by Sally Richards

Anxiety doesn’t come alone
it brings along unwelcome guests:
isolation, depression, fear.

The outside world 
an alien place — 
his window on the world
narrows by the day.

Get up! Go to work! You’re fine, just fine!
Get up! Get out! Get going!
Anxiety? Depression? All in the mind!

Anxiety doesn’t come alone
brings along unwelcome guests:
panic, desperation, despair.

He can’t get up, get out, get going — 
the outside world
an alien place;
his window on the world
bricked-up, negated —
unwelcome guests too much
to bare.

Sally Richards is a Shropshire-based poet whose most recent collection is Emperor Dragonfly (Caparison, 2023)

Scapegoat
by Peter Devonald

Did we invite our illness in? Is that the problem?
Our lifestyle choices gave it carte blanche?

Did we open all the windows and doors,
made it feel at home, welcomed, loved?

Did we not workout or exercise enough,
not love the right people or eat the right foods?

Perhaps we should have lost weight, drank less,
been less emotionally fragile, stronger, better?

Maybe we didn’t deal with childhood trauma, 
or we failed to stop the universe sooner?

We must all deserve to be blamed and shamed, 
marked, branded and stained, so expendable now.

Obviously we are to blame for our disease, 
why else would we be persecuted for it?

Peter Devonald is a multiaward-winning poet/screenwriter.

A new collection entitled The White Envelope Book: Poems In Opposition To The Pathways To Work Green Paper is a forthcoming flash e-publication to be joint-published by Caparison and Culture Matters. See culturematters.org.uk

Poetry submissions to thursdaypoems@gmail.com