Last issue, we featured two poems from history teacher, David McKinstry, who had been engaged in home schooling and dealing with the effects of COVID-19 on family and work. Here, we bring you several more.

Love and Lockdown

People love and are shrill
By accident of proximity
Fulfilling Napoleon’s observation
That emotions like politics
Are dictated by geography

Some succumb to loving
Others release by hating
But most by location

We compete in closeness
Friendship lends distance,
Kinship claustrophobia
Some are family Von Trapp
Others are family Von Trapped.

This is What I Voted For

When the dust settles
And the campaign is over,
You can sit back
With a malt and say
This is what I voted for.

When the pound is safe
And the food banks
Are doing a roaring trade,
You can say
This is what I voted for.

When free higher education
Once again is a privilege
Rather than a right,
You can say
This is what I voted for.

When health is in private hands
And waiting lists grow longer,
You can say
This is what I voted for.

When your gran kids
Are leaving to take
Jobs on a distant shore,
You can say
This is what I voted for.

When America demands
Cannon fodder for
Another oil war,
You can say
This is what I voted for.

When overworked minimum waged
Assistants close your costly
Care home room door,
You can shut your eyes and say
This is what I voted for.

Glasgow Green

Battalions of women
Washed their sheets
At a swift pace
Loading them in prams
With love and rough grace.

A thousand sheets they pinned
In the Glasgow wind,
Keeping hearth and home in union
Whilst their men staggered hame,
Two sheets to their own divine wind.

Countless washings in the wind
Memories of weans tucked up in bed
Thousands of sheets they’ll dry
Carting back and forth
With a communal sigh.

Digital Dickensian Age

Whilst tearing the social fabric
Out of the nation,
Brexit jingoists wrap themselves
Round the union flag,
Whilst packing their jewels
In a Fagan SWAG bag,
Welcome to the
Digital Dickensian Age

The financially revered
Are artful tax dodgers,
Whilst the bedroom tax
Force some to take in lodgers
Welcome to the
Digital Dickensian Age

Scrooge gets rich off
Sweat Shop labour,
Never playing host
To the conscience
Of Marley’s ghost,
Welcome to the
Digital Dickensian Age

Bill Sykes runs drug mules
Over home county line,
To serve up Coke
To suburbanites as they dine,
Welcome to the
Digital Dickensian Age

Politicians refuse free school meals
Though food is in plenty store,
Turning a deaf fat ear
To the communal cry
“Please, Sir, I want some more”,
Welcome to the
Digital Dickensian Age.