You call it a benefit
but that’s not quite right
is it really a benefit
to give us access to life?

More benefits cut
From those less able to fight
just another way
to harden an already harder life

More cuts in PIP
means less will survive
easier to access Euthanasia
than it is to thrive

the left or the right –
none of them doing right
by the most vulnerable people
early deaths you invite

Arthiritis or cancer
to them, none of it matters
cleaving basic from basics
leaving more lives in tatters

If the work makes you worse
then you’re not worth your dues
say we’re scrounging, “just crack on”
“do you really need both meds AND food?”

Millions on wait lists
just about pushing on
when you’re finally seen
they say “you’re just too far gone”

So they’ll cut and they’ll cut
never taxing billionaires more
living on pennies already
and we all know the score

At this point it’s only the fittest
of the pack who will survive
enforced ‘do not recusitate’s
as if we’re not worth being revived 

From birth to death worthless
yellow sticker label
a life worth less to capitalism
if they can’t harness your labour

There’s hardly any help as is
how can you make pittance less?
disabled people don’t need your pity
they need the constant attacks addressed

For PIP the fraud rate is zero
so it’s not about fraudulent claims
nothing but more people failed
to add to the long list of names

A lengthening list of people
who are being repeatedly lost
in a constant fight for recognition
simply more potential tossed

And this is going to keep on happening
if we don’t have a seat at the table
different levels of ability
doesn’t mean totally unable

No change will ever happen
unless we are enabled
this can’t be the way life’s supposed to be
for anyone disabled

How dare you say “If you can work you should”
we’re waiting for you to do your job
to rework a failing system
make useful your never hungry gob

Make benefits beneficial
let them actually mean what they say
’cause right now all that you’re doing
is pushing more and more of us to the fray

I feel as though I’m being pulled apart and down at the same time –
like my earlobes are weighted,
dragging my chin to meet the soles of my shoes each time I take a step.
I find it hard to believe that there are some people who do not feel this way –
who have not always felt this way,
who walk around, chin high without the worry
that the area where the base of your skull meets
the peak of your spine will become larger
as your head flag removes itself from its post
to tumble down and meet the ground.

Sometimes I get so overwhelmed with it all I have to lie on the ground.
My feet are firmly planted on the ground.
So much so, it’s hard to lift them off of it and into the air,
if only for a brief moment before they, inevitably,
return to their rightful resting place.

Like the final crack that breaks the disabled person’s back,
I am exhausted.

My spine is splintered.
My knees are hyper-extended into a crescent shape.
My fingers seem to be held together only by the tissue surrounding them
and my shoulders cannot carry the weight
of all of these existentialisms.

What if I get worse?
What if I am always in pain until the day that I die?
Will I greet the earth earlier than expected?

My fingertips continue to bind themselves together as I walk –
as if the core of my being cannot let them separate and individualise;
the tension is what keeps the hand together.

What keeps the whole body together –
I try to hold myself together while acknowledging the anticipation that I might fall apart.

I am told my thumb shouldn’t be able to touch my wrist when pushed back –
but it can.
My thumbs ache from being too far separated from their true pride of place.

I’m told that my hips shouldn’t move in that way,
but they do.
My hips try to push themselves outward from the coccyx is by at least a millimetre a day,
there are quotas to be met, after all.

What does it mean when your own body betrays you?
When the thing you love most is to walk all day, through the park, down into the dene with the dog bounding with you, but that leaves you in excruciating pain and stiffness for days afterwards?

Does it mean that it’s not for you?
Does it mean that you are simply unlucky? –
Does it mean that you are forever destined to have to defend and collect yourself like a body of evidence
to a jury of doctors and nurses
and specialists who will poke and prod and test and scan and tug and bend and take and gawk?

Does it mean that if your knees are in conjunction with your wrists
and your ankles are in cohorts with your collarbone,
you should just accept that a life of pain
and constant speculation is the only way forward?

That you should have raised eyebrow after raised eyebrow –
how old are you?
And you have that much wrong with you at, what, 20?
I laugh it off, say I’ll be fucked in a few years time –
but, oh, I’m sorry,
did I make this conversation awkward for you?

No, you’re right, keep prying into my medical history.
No, you’re right. I simply cannot be disabled.
But there are no right answers to your questions.
I checked, down on the floor where my anvil meets the pebbles.

Eee, hey!
D’yu rememba all them nights playin’ the bingo-board-game in the kitchen, on the valentines-gift-table He wrote under for his wife years ago?
There was no prizes to the games.
Nout but them and you on a summer’s neet,
after eating questionable food wi’ watered-down ketchup while learning rude songs “not to be repeated to parents” (that yu repeated to parents and got them in trouble for). And d’yu rememba repeating everything at least twice, to She who refused to wear a hearing aid
despite being deef aal Her life,
fuelling the joke that when He asked ‘a out all them years ago, He asked ‘a in ‘a deef ear and
Shu didn’t kna what Shu was saying yes to.
A think she probably started it – like telling all us bairns that She got married in
an awld fur coat,
ney knickers,
one shoe and one wellyboot.
Wu aal believed ‘a at one time or another.
Shu loved playin wi’ wu like that,
like takin ‘a false teeth out to scare the little’uns. Later shu’d do it on request tu make wu laugh.
And d’yu remember how, despite there being so many of us, He always made wu feel so special?
Teaching wu things beyond wa years and,
when wu understood, he was so proud.
And when wu didn’t, he was patient.
A kna I was definitely His worst chess opponent, but
He played with iz anyways.
He kept playing, and teaching.
D’yu remember where wu all got wa love fa
crosswords,
and sudoku
and word searches?
His morning paper.
And yu’d go wi’ Him to go get it,
and come out wi’ some sweets or one of them
weird sticky aliens that wa’ meant to have babies but never did? And yu’d sit and do them togetha – pencil first.
And how He’d let wu use His laptop with the wifi dongle to play solitaire
and minesweeper,
which He tried to explain a few times
but A still don’t really undastand.
D’yu remember them trips to the beach
“for an ice cream”, when wu’d come back with
buckets full u’ pebbles for the raised bed in ‘a back garden? And how shu’d get us up there to replace them all, and “grab the weeds while we’re up there an’orl”. D’yu remember the drives to neywhere,
wi’ some charity shop stops on the way?
Sometimes, yu’d go wi’ Her, and be spoilt rotten – yu’d be given money to pick ‘one thing’
and then, shu’d pick another fa yu
and then, pay for the thing yu picked in the first place. And then, shu’d always gi’ you some change
to give t’ someone homeless too.
Some days, though, yu’d stay wi’ Him in the car – listening to James Blunt Back to Bedlam or,
once he got an AUX system, CeeLo Green Fuck you, and reading — everything from fiction to manuals.
And after all that, yu’d sit at the valentines-gift-table at the end of the day,
belly full and happy,
playing the bingo-board-game wi’ no clue that undaneath was the message He wrote for Her:
‘Jim loves Olive’.
Wu all forgot some of them memories that shaped wu until recently.
Wu all forgot
until wu found the message again
when tha’ was neyone left to sit at the table.