Gone are the days of princesses
and nights in shining armor;
My love, this is England now
In the daze of fares selling fair ethics,
Where knights slaughter sacred cows
Amid rued lives, dignities and businesses
In rude awakenings, fresh grievances
And very little honour towards neighbours,
In a winter that does not seem to pause
A dog sleeping in a doorway chews his paws;
The mighty say we choose this,
A lax hypothesis for half choices based on lies,
Lack breeds homelessness in familiar lanes;
A city’s slow demise in the ice where lives have lain.

Antonia Sara Zenkevitch

 

The first two lines of this poem were a prompt from poet Sonya Annita Song which in turn reminded me of the haunting Sinead O’Connor song ‘Black Boys on Mopeds’. The content is inspired by things I have recently seen.