Play Your Card Right
Hard up? On a benefit?
In that case, you must have no treat:
No alcohol, no place to sit,
And certainly no food to eat.
Churches may provide some pews
For you to lean, perhaps to kneel.
You may not gander at Sky News;
And, we repeat to you, no meal.
The Welfare Cash Card is designed
To limit where and what you spend:
No pleasure for the flesh or mind,
And scoff is off. It’s at an end.
Your card entitles you to walk,
And use a modicum of air:
But throw away your knife and fork –
To feed you would be quite unfair.
Judges, ministers, top brass
Have earned the right to lie and lounge,
With dinner (it will be first class).
But not for you. You’re on the scrounge.
Bankers, doctors, teachers will
Be given joints and knives to carve.
You card will buy you bitter pills.
Swallow them before you starve.
Click here for a Telegraph article
Click here to buy Bill’s poetry collection Ringers
Click here to buy Bill’s poetry collection Impossible Objects