MARIANNE SZLYK

Dreams of MIT

Last night I dreamed
I returned to work
each summer,
giving up my time
for typing, filing,
never leaving my
metal desk
in case the phone
that never rang
would ever ring.

I appeared like
a ghost of the 90s,
wearing thick nylons,
padded shoulders,
straight skirts,
and knock-off perfume
from Woolworth’s,
things I would
never wear
in the fall.

This time I tell myself
I left this job
over twenty years ago.
I remember the walk
back from lunch
on the last day
at Legal Sea Foods,
my waist band
tight from chocolate
mousse.

My co-workers and I
finally talked
after my three years
of waiting
for the phone

until at Mass Ave.,
I turned right,
not crossing

with them,

not saying
goodbye.

*

Barefoot in Purgatory

The last time I went out barefoot
white-hot concrete and flecks
of stone stung my feet.  Humidity

draped over my shoulders

like a jacket that had been
a good idea in the morning.
Staggering beneath it,
I watched for shards of glass.  

A frat boy in Air Jordans, young enough 

to be my bleached-blond stepson,

buzzed up and down State Road 26,
killing time until Saturday night
by the river in a city without graffiti.

I was killing time as well until Sunday morning
when I could glide across the river
like a ghost once again.

*

At the Science Fiction Museum

Dust motes dance like they always have
over the brittle, yellowed paperbacks
that she cracks open.  But the sun
no longer streams through the window

past plain muslin curtains.  

Instead, it oozes, leaving a film
on the books and her fingers.
It reminds her of the ocean,
a being that creeps up these streets
in order to take back its territory.

She looks for this moment in the books

but finds only themes from the 1960s,
a time of garish colors, simple
shapes, and quick trips
to the moon and back.

She glances at the moon,

that speck of foam, that crust.
No one lives there.  No one goes
there.  No one ever will again.

She glares towards the ocean,

that creature
that waits for her, this house,
these books, all that will
dissolve in its acid bath.

She dreams of saving these books

from the ocean, from recycling,
even though they did not
predict this moment, even
though they are merely artifacts.

Because they are artifacts

like other museums’ bones
and arrowheads, like their
go-go boots and vinyl miniskirts,
she will save them.

*******************copyright Marianne Szlyk

In addition to being a very good poet, Marianne Szlyk runs The Song Is page, which beautifully combines poetry and music. She also teaches at Montgomery College.

SUBMISSIONS CALL: MORE WOMEN NEEDED

Bradlaugh’s Finger

Needs

More

Women

Contributors

The website appreciates every sub but women are still poorly represented. So send us your poems, your art, your music. Tell us what you think about stuff. We want to hear from you. (jackthebardstard@gmail.com)

D.D. SWIFT

NFA

You told me we live in a civilised nation

but i can't hear that without finding it frustrating

cos there's something about that statement I find way beyond grating 

and its that we're so civilized that many still lack proper accommodation

while houses stand empty, cos lives are worth less than profits

and the fear of appearances at shop fronts breeds spike-strips 

to clear out the small bit of shelter from this winters grip

we've bought into capitalism with our humanity as forfeit

and it's amazing how many things we seem to take for granted

when we've got somewhere for our feet to be planted

it's like having all we need can leave us so cold heated

cos when you swap your souls for luxuries your view gets slanted

i ain't saying every one needs beds of roses and sheets of silk

bags of gold and their pockets overflowing

and ain't no mad dream about some land of honey and milk

it's about giving everyone the chance to stay safe and keep growing

see something as basic as housing should be a given human right

it shouldn't be the kind of thing for which you have to fight

you shouldn't have to beg for it or scrape and be polite

and it's not the kind of thing we should let be swept from sight

cos sleeping under the stars ain't always the fairy tale it sounds like

when it's way beyond a choice and it's the reality of daily life

when you're starving like a famine but it's not cos you're on hunger strike

it's just that life without an address is a recipe for strife

when you're huddled in a doorway hungry and frozen 

with nowhere to hide as a cold wind blows in

trying not to get swept up with the flood as is flows in

being treated like it's a life that you've willingly chosen

but this is 2019, there ain't no excuse,

no first world country should see people with no roof

we've already got the neck of our future in the noose

when we've got tent cities do you need more proof

and it's not someone else’s issue, we need to stand up and own this

cos at least two people you went to school with are probably homeless

so realize it's a problem that affects us all more or less

and if we can’t stand against it we can't be our best

just take a look with open eyes you'll be forced to confess

it's an ever growing problem that we need to squash to a flatness

see you'd need a clear mind to find a way out of this madness

but you never really sleep when the street is your mattress

and it's hard to be positive, of course life drags

when you carry all you own inside a couple of black bags

running the gauntlet hit with endless snags

cos comfort comes with unaffordable price tags

and no locked doors to keep away the fear of abuse

if we let it carry on we'll have failed our youth

we'll leave a world more concerned with cash than people having roofs

it's not a future to look forward to and that's the truth

we ain't living in a paradise where the future is sweet

with every bodies life's sorted out packaged and neat

when we've got nearly 5000 sleeping harsh on the streets

for those stuck in this life it it's where hell and earth meets

are we desensitized, the streets should be running with tears

the thought that homelessness exists should fill you with fear

when it's costing us more than 400 souls in a year

and it's our fault, we caused this, the buck stops here

one in two hundred homeless, our culture's wrecked

every year there's 4 percent more, how long till you're next

till you're seeking warmth and getting shown no respect

it could easily be a life that you yourself reflect

lets face it though, the numbers are a guess so

we'll never really know how many call the streets their home

but the numbers, day by day, are continuing to grow

why do we let this be an existence for anyone to own

it's the twenty first century, it just seems nuts to me 

that some still dream of four walls and a bed as a luxury

cos we've allowed our constant chasing and craving for currency 

to overtake our empathy and drown out decency

so look at your soul and the state of the stain

and ask yourself what s going on with your brain

when you can turn your nose up in disgust and disdain 

as a man without a home drinks a beer to stay sane

and to numb out the hold of the cold and the pain

when you walk through a world that allows you to sustain

the kind of lifestyle in which you're happy to partake and to drain

two bottles of red cos you had a bad day on the train

so before you get through your front door tonight and lock it

remember how lucky you are to have house keys in your pocket

it's not even a joke, so don't even mock it

just spare a thought for those that didn't have your luck one bit

I know you think that you'd survive the streets well, you think you're that tough

but i guarantee it's breaks you, it's more than enough

to bust your spirit, and to leave your soul crushed

after all, there's a reason that they call it sleeping rough. ***************copyright D.D. Swift 2019 D.D. Swift is a writer, musician and spoken word artist based in Milton Keynes.

JACKIE CULWORTH

DOWN & OUT IN THE FLEXIBLE ECONOMY

I

The ordinary working people of England are treated like shit. Anyone who doesn’t know this is either an idiot or they’re choosing not to look. Anyone who thinks it’s not true is profiting from their oppression and should go and boil their head in hot oil forever.

I was offered work by an agency the other week. Let’s call them ARS. The Job Centre makes me volunteer in a charity shop once a week but the offer of work came on the same day. On the morning of the shift, at half-past nine in the rain when I was just about to walk into the charity shop.

Three hours induction at a warehouse, 2 until 5. And then an 8-hour-a-day shift packing, five days a week, starting the next day. But before I went for the induction I had to go and register at ARS. I was told I could get there ‘any time between 11.30 and 12’.

The deputy manager in the charity shop had just worked ten days straight because her boss was off sick and her boss’ boss had no one she could offer as support. She’d been relying on me because there were no other volunteers that morning. But what could I do? I had holes in my trainers letting in the fucking rain.

ii.

In the ARS outer office all the seats were occupied by men and women filling in paperwork. Those who talked were all from other countries. Everybody was here for the same reason, though: they were registering for work.

I filled in my paperwork when I could find a seat and took it to the kind-looking young woman behind the big reception desk. She took it through a door and I reclaimed my seat.

I hadn’t been sitting in it long when a woman with expensive hair and nails, not to mention disturbingly orange skin, came out through the same door and asked me to follow her.

We went into the main office, which was comparatively large, a bit like a call centre, with at least ten identical people sitting at computer screens pecking away at keyboards.

The woman, who said her name was Alice, took me into a side room and asked me to sit down. Then she restated the details of the job I was going to do, rattling the words out like rounds from a Gatling gun, barely taking time to breathe, giving me no chance at all to ask a question.

Does that sound good to you? she asked at the end of her verbal onslaught. No, it sounded like a very slow and a very shit way to die. But so was being humiliated at the Job Centre every fortnight and walking around with rainwater swilling in your trainers.

iii

At the warehouse that afternoon I sat in a small room with five people from Romania, one from Russia and two other English people. A woman who didn’t introduce herself read through the rules and regulations of the company in a very bored, droney voice, emphasising the number of ways in which we could get fired.

Three sick days in one month will result in instant dismissal, she droned. Your mum must be so proud, I thought. But of course I said nothing. Our job was to shut the hell up, be good and take our medicine.

The next stage for us was watching the health and safety videos every company makes you watch. While they were on the little Nazi in charge of the group left the room.

When she returned, we had to register on the company database using laptops they provided. This, I suppose, was to check out how good we were with computers. I’m good but my keyboard was knackered; the @ didn’t work, which is a bit of a drawback these days. One of the English blokes was still doing his after everybody else had finished.

A walkaround followed, Adolf moving so quickly no one could keep up with her. The warehouse was exactly like the three other warehouses I’d been in, only smaller.  Cold, noisey, full of people in different-coloured hi-viz jackets and with really crap music pouring out of speakers all over the place.


Finally we had to work for an hour at the packing desks stuffing envelopes with calendars. As we worked the little Nazi watched. Then another one turned up. He began talking to some of my group like they were shit under his foot. If he addressed them that way in a pub he’d be glassed.


It’s like one of my friends once said. The problem with these cunts is they think they’re managers because they’re powerful, not that they’re powerful because they’re managers.

iv.

But this country has been the same since all you bastards elected Margaret Thatcher three times in a row and kissed away your rights in exchange for – whatever it was you thought you were getting. I never did understand what that was.

Anyway I had a job, at least for a while. My problems were over, temporarily. Except I didn’t have a job.

The next morning I got up expecting to have a 2 o’clock start at the warehouse. When I checked my phone I saw I had a text from ARS: You won’t be needed at ******* today. You did not pass the training. I will call you about other work later.

I texted them not to bother. I would look somewhere else.

At the Job Centre all they wanted to know was how much I was going to be paid for the three hours I’d worked, because that would have to be deducted from the whopping benefits I partied on from week to week.

Since nothing had gone into my bank, I emailed the agency and asked them when they would be paying me. Alice texted the next morning just after 7am saying they would not be paying me because I had only received training; I’d done no work.

What the fuck?!

I texted that we’d all worked for an hour packing, even if she didn't define the other two hours as work (I did). We deserved to be paid for the packing at least.

Her reply came half an hour later. it was like she'd had to think about it. I’ll have to look into that, she wrote. I didn’t know about the packing.

But I’d already changed my mind about the money. If £8 was all I was going to get out of the tight bastards – they owed me £24 – it wasn’t worth all the hassle I would get from the Job Centre.

v.

Get a job if life’s so hard on the dole, I hear you say. Thanks, I didn’t think of that. Wankers.

I had a job. I did night shifts for four years at a warehouse ten miles away. It took me hours of standing around in all weathers at bus stops and hours on unreliable buses to get there.

But the company went bust and everybody got laid off. Agency workers went first, no notice, no compensation. They don’t have to treat agency like anything other than deadwood floating downriver. They’re an endlessly renewable resource with no rights and only two-thirds of a human soul.

That’s the flexible fucking economy for you.

The owner of the company did all right, of course. I saw him on Match of the Day the other day, grinning smugly in his outsize suit in the director’s box of his premier league football club.

I hope he loses a bundle and his team goes down, although he’s only a symptom of the disease that’s killing us and not the cause

KING'S GAMBIT

image: wychwoodfestival.com

Northampton folkbeat superheroes King's Gambit have just posted their confirmed dates for the forthcoming year. More will be added. The band will also be recording their new album.

2020

FEBRUARY 28th KONTRA ROOTS CLUB

MARCH 28th   THE LAB, Northampton

MAY 29th -30th WILD VOICES FESTIVAL time tbc

JUNE 27th  ROYSTONBURY FESTIVAL  time tbc

AUGUST 29th  SHOELAPALOOZA  Northampton time tbc