ODE TO POVERTY

Is there anything worse than a greedy person?

Greedy people that have a lot and don’t want anybody else to have even a wee bit of it.

Greedy people who own houses and yachts but can’t find it in their hearts to give away even one part of it to poor people who have nothing.

Greedy people who think that poor people are poor because they are hapless arseholes.
Greedy people who want to push poor people back into darkness.
Greedy people who hate where those poor people come from.

How many greedy people are there? How many poor people are there?

I’ll wager that there are more people without town houses than there are with.

Greedy people make television shows that likes to applaud greedy people.
Greedy people make magazines and newspapers that love to take photos of greedy people so they can encourage poor people to aspire to be greedy too.
Good old James-Daniel-Craig-Bond reckons that if you die rich then you have failed.
I wonder what the greedy people would make of that?

Anna stands outside our Waitrose every weekend selling ‘Big Issue’. Always smiling. She lives away a way and yet she smiles and hopes that the greedy people will fill her poorly palm with some dosh so that she can feed her poorly kids. And the greedy people do give her money because she is a reminder of what happens when greedy people take everything. When greedy people leave poor people standing around in the climate change to ask for handouts because the greedy people have fucked everything up.

If you want to play tennis it’s hard if you’re a poorly person.
If you want to play golf
If you want a house
If you want to be educated.
If you want to paint
If you want to sing
If you want to dance
If you want write
If you want to nurse
It’s hard if you’re a poorly person.

SO IF GREEDY PEOPLE OWN EVERYTHING, AND GREEDY PEOPLE DON’T LIKE SHARING THEIR GREED THEN WHAT ARE THE PEOPLE WHO AREN’T GREEDY TO DO?

Well they can live off the land if the greedy people who own the land will let them.
They can live in the fields if the greedy people who own the fields will let them.
If the greedy people won’t let the poorly people into their fields or on their land then where are the poorly people meant to plant their beans.
If the gates are shut and the greedy people are eating their dinner behind locked doors then what are the poorly people to think?

The poorly people will surely start to think that the fields and land and air and water and sun and oil and earth also belongs to them but they can’t get at it because the greedy people have put laws and locks and wires and words and electric fences all around it.

And when the greedy people sit in the Palace of Westminster and talk about what it’s like to be poor, but don’t do fuck all about it, then what are the poorly people to think?
And when the schools run out of pencils.
And when the hospitals run out of medicine.
And when the shops run out of food.
And when the common runs out of sense.
And when countries run out of peace.
What are the poorly people to think?

When all the greedy people are still talking about it over a glass of Mateus Rosé whilst the tower blocks drip fecal matter, just what are the poorly people to make of it?
Maybe they will think that praps the greedy people don’t give a flying fuck?

Then when the poorly people realise that the greedy people have schools that have loads of pencils and hospitals with loads of medicine, and loads of this and tons of that then what will those poorly people do?

For what do poorly people do when they get old? Greedy people watch poorly people get old, they watch them selling their bungalows for bandages, the poorly people must wonder why the greedy don’t help out with Egyptian cotton sheets, clean towels and compassion.

I wonder when the greedy people get to the pearly gates and Peter, Paul or Mary waggle their fingers at them what will the greedy people say?

“It weren’t me guv.”
“But you let the poorly people eat shit, live in shit and die in shit.” Peter, Paul and Mary might say.

“And what did you do about it?”
“We put our fingers in our ears, and our eyes, and we blamed those poorly people from over there, cos it weren’t me guv.”

Then the greedy people will put their hands in their deep pockets and there will be nothing there.
It’ll be all gone cos you cant take it with you.

“You poor fuckers” Mary, Peter or Paul might say.
“You had your chance to be a decent human person but all you did was count your moolah, and tuck it away where the poorly couldn’t get it. But now the laughs on you. You poor fuckers.” Thats what PP and M might say.

If the greedy people thought that might happen maybe then they would share some of their honk.
Those Greedy people who own oil, well it’s not really their’s though is it?
Those Greedy people who own land
Those Greedy people who own water
Those Greedy people who own gas
Those Greedy people who own electricity
Cos it’s not really theirs though is it?

If the greedy people seem all shiny and nice, the poorly folk will want to be greedy too, and then they wont want to share their beetroots and their shampoo either, they won’t want to share their land and their water will they?
The poorly people will want long grasping arms like the greedy people.
They will want to learn clever words, and learn in places where the greedy people feel comfortable, so that they can feel comfortable too.

But hang about if more and more people are getting more and more poor and greedy people are getting less and less then it will only be a handful of greedy bastards that own it all and then what will happen?

Will the poorly people say enough is efuckingnough?
Will they say we want clean houses too.
And schools with nice bricks and big books.
And homes with clean walls and safe bricks.
Will the poorly say “We want the possibility of optimism too?”.
ONLY we want it for everybody – big, small, fat, thin, black, white, brown, yellow, four limbed, two limbed, no limbed, and spiritual. NOT JUST FOR THE GREEDY BASTARDS.

All the poorly people will say isn’t it time to stop spending money on catapults.
Isn’t it time to spend OUR money on helping people heal.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the greedy people had to stand upside down in a bucket of shit for a change – instead of us.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we stood upside down in a bucket of shamrock for a change.

So just what are the poorly people to do?

Wouldn’t it be nice if they took their greedy lies and turned them into lanterns of light so that the world could finally agree THAT GREED DOESN’T PAY and that greed and greedy people should be STOPPED

Wouldn’t that be nice.