“Get on with it!” say Brexiteers, That phrase, gravel in my ears, As one more factory shuts up shop A few more thousand lose their jobs Amid the lies that they would prosper If immigration disappears, The truth is there, but they don’t hear As we tie ourselves up in knots “Get on with it!” They say; our nation’s auctioneers, But the way ahead is not clear Except that we'll all be worse off And more of us won’t have enough; Revisiting depression years, Get on with it? “Get on with it!” the endless round, As government debates confound Both the best and the worst of us On every side of this circus, As leaders’ arrogance astounds, Our creaking democracy found Cold, abused, hungry, gagged and bound, The response offered by leavers: “Get on with it” The majority lost not found In archaic schemes, rules for clowns That sway countries and media, Though eyes are now on Westminster It’s corporations that are crowned Get on with it? “Get on with it!” say Brexiteers, But no workable deal appears, Meanwhile, vital services rot, People, made homeless, later robbed Of any chance of a future As we betray our teenagers Steal children’s potential careers And up the climate chaos odds. “Get on with it!” Say those scared, yet still unaware They’re selling our protections off, Imperfect though they were, to bluff Self-governance that never was, Nebulous words as deadlines near, “Get on with it!” “Get on with it”, get on with what? With the Brexit of the lynch mob Or the one that mimics Norway? The ‘hurry-up’ crowd never say Though they are so rarely quiet, There is no wand to whisk away The social ills of the U.K, Or falsely recalled yesterdays, Brexiteers scapegoated Europe, Get on with it? Get on with what? National decay? Alienating minorities? We've no constitution to cope With destitution beyond scope Of those four words of mockery: "Get on with it!" Not "How?" or, ever, "What comes after?" Nor "What is it?" "What's wrong with it?" Not, it seems, "What's wrong with us?" Never "What's stopping this?" No truth in Brexit For Brexiteers; No real plans At all; None. Antonia Sara Zenkevitch
Tag: Poverty
Gone
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.
Unlock
Unlock
This deadlock
Of flailing democracy
Before we’re locked inside
A falling fortress time forgot
Half our number failing to perceive
We are becoming what we are not
A thing our future won’t believe
Warped by horrors of austerity
Fragmented by painful pride
Becoming dark histories
The public outcries
No alibis
For lies
Unmet
Needs
Breed
Crimes
Lines
At foodbanks to feed
Lives
Identities redefined
Maligned
This is oppression’s seed
Partition and hypocrisy
Please heed and unlock
Antonia Sara Zenkevitch
Governance
A question for 2019;
What does good governance mean?
Northern Ireland’s parliament is in shutdown
With Stormont in a chronic stalemate,
The default position is uneven centralism,
Then governmental stasis in the states,
Meaning more insecurity for North Americans
And every country to which they relate,
Democrats standing up to Trump’s Republicans
Who want them to collude and participate
In a wall built to keep out Mexicans,
A farce millions cannot contemplate,
In France, we see the rise of the Gilets Jaunes
Forcing Marcon into the Grand Debate
When riot police could not keep down
The protests; government could not dominate
With gas, batons or flash ball guns,
In Brazil, two extremes woo the electorate,
One saturated with corruption, in prison
Still claiming to be compassionate
Though in ten years the nation’s been driven
Into gross inequality, theft, violence,
Knifing the opposition, a man with a mission
But one who counts minorities as less,
While in a divided United Kingdom,
Parliament is in an almighty mess,
The cusp of leaving the European Union
Is marked with bilateral anguish
With no agreed, viable solution
To the much- disputed Brexit
Taking up all the air in the room
And consuming all other policies,
Amid worsening living conditions,
Ignoring individual and collective needs,
So, I return to my earlier question
About what all this says about democracy
And other forms of administration,
Problems echoed criss-cross countries
So often wrongly blamed on migration,
I see in each the patterns of plutocracy;
Of rights and voice defined by income,
Then, amid hardships, crises of identity
Leading to questioned certainties, divisions
And rife threats to human ties and societies,
Too often undermining the rights of minorities
In rising tides of nationalism,
There are examples of covert tyrannies;
Of leaders not resigning when they should
And other top dogs taking uncivil liberties
For their own or their tribe’s preferment,
Encouraging disillusion, discouraging diversity,
Increasing alienation and disenfranchisement
In national emergencies, too often political intent
Seems partisan, not meant to broker agreement,
In each case, as in others across continents,
Security is undermined by unstable employment
And people struggling for food, mortgage or rent,
In each case there’s a sense of restricted involvement
Of people in the workings of their government,
Often leading to questions on freedom of movement
When prejudices rise from the undercurrents,
In each case, mainstream media plays its part,
Directing direct democracy, or its proxy,
Sources of funding can fuel changes of heart
Affecting each story’s legitimacy,
While every situation is different,
Each wrought with seeming infinite complexity,
There seem to be patterns that are consistent;
The need for greater political transparency;
The need for engagement, informed consent
And protections against unreachable governance
Whatever the locale; whatever the distance,
Deficits of democracy are meeting resistance
Because deceptions and social disparities
Lead to inequality and festering grievance,
As uprisings against injustice lose clarity,
Destroyed by divide to rule philosophies
Made worse by the walls of isolationists,
Maybe this is a question for psychologists,
Maybe we’re either rebels or pragmatists,
Maybe we’re enigmas for archaeologists
Or evidence against climate change denialists,
Maybe we’re each authors of the crisis
Or targets for the powerful’s devices,
Whatever the truth of it is
We’re made stronger by who’s beside us,
Beyond cultures, faiths, ideologies,
The need to be heard by our leaders
Whether these lead councils, constituencies,
Countries or cross-national assemblies,
I do not have the answers
but
I believe this, we are strengthened by unities
And valuing ourselves and our fellow humans,
To embolden interconnected communities
With shared interests and empowered regions
Served by, not serving their parliamentarians.
Antonia Sara Zenkevitch
The Bell and Drum
Beneath old towers of golden stone
The clanging bell, the thump of drum,
Where an ageless river flows;
Protesters come, flags are flown
Of unions caught in the undertow,
People have gathered together
In clamorous amalgamation,
Side by side in the bitter weather
In hope, in fury, in confusion,
Equal and opposite in their fervour
For union or nationalism;
Those who see our saviour
In a second referendum,
Those who want Westminster
To deliver the sworn unicorn
And those who’d just prefer
This Brexit business done,
The noise, and then the hush
As the crowds wait and listen
In that huddled crush
For parliament’s decision,
As the bells peel
I worry with millions
That there be a no deal;
An incalculable burden
Leading to more poverty,
Inequality, social division
Affecting the majority,
A bad deal garners historic defeat
As the drum beats
The hearts on the street,
I wonder what consensus
Parliament could meet
That would guard and represent us,
If cabinet chose only to outreach
To Brexiteer extremists in their party
Ensuring May’s red lines aren’t breached
In the name of the mock democracy
Her impassable processes preached,
While Labour refuses doors to dialogue
A far-right Brexit seems a possibility,
Corbyn in apparent stasis, his own voice vague,
I fear a worse deal passed by united Tories;
For a path to ruin to be laid
The percentage win need only be tiny,
Let me be as clear as the tolling bell
I’ve wanted passionately to remain,
That hope by a minor margin fell,
Now, uncertainty and frustration reign,
Disintegrating realms, unforgivable
That all this will cause us all more pain,
We could say the Brexit project’s failed;
For millions of us, this would be preferable,
But other millions would feel their voice curtailed
And we must think of them as well;
Not the bigotry and isolationism
Within the leaver’s swell
Nor notions driven by racism
Which we must quell,
But the inherent criticism
Of governance being too central,
Distant, too far from them;
Too absent in their struggles;
Seemingly devoid of realism;
Aloof in the face of their troubles,
Those who work beneath Big Ben
Can sometimes seem the most remote,
But the EU has been condemned
By those who see the ocean as a moat
And invasion in each boat or plane;
Who’ve been sold the scapegoat
To explain what’s hard to frame;
Hidden in many leaver’s votes
Was a broad, nebulous rejection
Of the status quo,
We need a proper constitution
Yet those negotiations closed,
We traded thoughts of UK devolution;
Of proactive regions within a whole;
Brexit offered as an alternative solution,
Yet, in all the to and fro,
Scarlet barricades and preconditions
There is one thing all this shows;
Lack of transparency in political decisions;
A deficit we cannot afford
On the benches of our House of Commons,
Our crises don’t begin in Brussels or Strasburg,
The problem has long been born at home;
Our economy, among the most centralised in the world,
Witnessing widening gaps in people’s income,
The EU used a stooge, Westminster failings ignored,
As the drum thunders and the bell chimes
To conundrums and discord,
Facing divorce fees or severing fines –
Our futures hanging on a word,
Too much not agreed, too much undefined
And all of us calling out to be assured
In these troubling, world-shifting times,
While we, like collecting dew, are poured
Into the flow of the leaden Thames,
If we go ahead, we need a far softer line
To protect our kingdom’s unions,
Our security, our peace, and the rights
Of our UK and international citizens,
To guard investments and keep in sight
Our shared intercontinental ambitions,
Cross-border threats to climate
And the need for social protections,
But the hour is getting late
As debates continue into the night
And we watch others write our fate
As deals fall in the dwindling light.
Antonia Sara Zenkevitch
What the Dickens? – A Christmas Carol Revisited
What the Dickens is this?
As parliament breaks up for Christmas
We are visited by the ghosts of promises;
As Brexit consumes the policies
Once pledged to deal with ‘burning injustices’,
The ghost of past oaths and assurances
To tackle rouge bailiffs and rip-off leases
Are abandoned as inequality advances;
See the ghosts to be crouched on cold streets,
Lives, not just statistics in rising homelessness,
The ghost of past undertakings and vows
To confront domestic violence, here and now
With electronic tags for known offenders
And forced rehab for abusive substance users,
How many victims are no longer with us
Since broken pacts to protect survivors?
Ghosts of lawful guarantees to defend us
In the word they gave they’d shield workers
From still legal wage-theft by some businesses,
People treated like those caged wild creatures
Still allowed to be trapped in certain circuses,
As the cabinet prepares to sleep this December 24th,
May they hear the howling wind knocking at their doors
And see the ghost of now, shades of what came before
And the spectre of the future if they don’t change course.
Antonia Sara Zenkevitch
My NHS
i laugh at falling;
so i laugh often,
my spirit strong,
my body broken,
my breathing,
my movement
dependant on medicines,
that may not make it through
with a bad Brexit or a no deal,
i have specific needs for food,
i fear their obstruction on route
as blockades slow the turning of the wheel,
and prices rise with extra duties,
the threat to the chronically ill, the elderly
and those labeled disabled is all too real,
i have lived with disabilities
for nearly four decades,
but extra barriers disabled me
in unspeakable ways,
there are millions reliant on meds, like me,
those with asthma or diabetes,
melanoma, DVT,
depression and anxiety –
the conditions are plenty
and so must be the treatments
for all of us
from a health service
free for ALL at the point of delivery;
The NHS.
Antonia Sara Zenkevitch
Lullaby to Democracy; 3,500 Troops
Lullaby to democracy,
3,500 troops,
Germany in the 1930s
Or Britain very soon?
The menace of martial law
Is the opposite of sovereignty
As we close the door
On civil liberties,
Like the right to protest,
Did any soldier join the military
To enforce this mess; this chaos
Or to carry their guns in our cities?
Young soldiers could not believe
We could conceive of this,
For the 52%, most of them deceived,
Who went to the ballot box
And voted to leave,
This is a ticking bomb, set
By our undemocratic government,
Who are using our military as a threat,
To push forward a dangerous agreement;
The clock ticking on a month’s postponement
In which they’ve gagged the rest of parliament,
“Quick, quick,”
The cabinet say,
Tick, Tock, Tick,
As time races away
On the fuse they lit,
Silencing calls for a people’s vote
As the populace turns against Brexit
And the government says “No”
To us choosing not to exit.
Antonia Sara Zenkevitch
In the Air
8am,
The grieving wind
And sirens in the air,
An icy 18th of December,
The future forecast
Still nebulous; unclear
As destitution stings
The atmosphere
And each gust calls
Like an anguished mother,
Where do we go from here?
Then, through the thin walls,
The chimes of a child’s laughter
And my heart hurdles to my throat
In that breath and beat of hope.
Antonia Sara Zenkevitch