Your heart is alive; I know this
by the way you change your grandson
gently enough to nurture him and firm
enough to keep him from rolling off your knee.
I know this by the way you speak of your special needs child
who could go into residential care but you do it all
yourself, because you love the bones of him.
I know this because you are ferocious when this
government, yet again, lets your boy down.
You, on the other hand, you who call her ‘scum’,
who turn away as her child stims loudly in a supermarket,
who call yourselves poor as you cash in your Air BNB profits
from the spare cottage on your estate. You who
complain about immigrants and scroungers,
who want everything to stay the same, the way
it’s always been, how it used to be, how it suits you,
you are the walking dead with already rotten hearts.
Silverstreaks 