My Poetry. Living on the Breadline!.

These days we often worry
Whether we will eat or starve;
Bills and debts keep piling up—
No holiday to the Algarve.
Food banks loom as a godsend
When there’s nothing left to eat;
While the rich grow fatter off the land,
The poor are battered and beat.

As we rob Peter to pay Paul,
The bills must always come first;
Children are going hungry now,
From the moment of their birth.
The government screws the poor,
Insisting that taxes be paid;
The rich get richer, the poor hemmed in
Under the breadline they have made.

Hard-working families deteriorate,
With luxuries non-existent or rare;
Children cannot understand
Why the table is often bare.
As the years come and slowly go,
We wonder: will things get better?
Prices rise and money is tight
In the world of the fated debt letter.

Jobs are scarce in impoverished towns,
As benefits face deep reform;
But the hardest hit are the working class—
For them, the suffering is the norm.
What is left for our children’s future
When little or no work is around?
Even for the highly educated,
In menial jobs they are bound.

We have to live in constant hope
And be positive every day;
You get your say at voting time,
But do we ever get our way?

© William Sinclair Manson 2025