Memo of a Demo

Kids smoking rollups

Looking cool with filters

Pushing a butcher’s bike

Stuffed with subwhoofers

“Fuck You I won’t Do What You Tell Me”

The protest posse posing for the long lens of the press pack

Do they know that demos are meant to fizzle like a sparkler

And then it’s time to go home

Job done, it’s been fun

Light the touch paper of democracy

A process hard won

If it looks like it’s gone out don’t go back-

It could explode onto the front page,

And riot rozzers are all the rage in this

Day and age

Legal Observer in orange gives me a bust card

“In case you get arrested”

Me, a 40 year old mum,

With a four year old son

I know what a bust card is

From way back when

But I never got caught up in any bother then.

As I leave Parliament Square lines of hi-viz cops

Become backdrops for tourists pics- memo of a demo

I clock the riot gear in the vans as I walk back across Westminster bridge

This poem was written in response to attending the strike rally at Westminster, a demonstration against proposed changes to public sector pensions and retirement age.

It was performed on the same evening of the strike.

For more information click here.

Entered into One Shot Wednesday at the fantastic One Stop Poetry site.