Up there in your ivory towers, safe from that which makes us so mad, you think you know

innocent as babes you are, cocooned in your high-paid jobs, so reluctant even to bestow

a liitle hope for those poor souls forced by poverty to choose daily between food and heat

let kids freeze or let them starve, or send them barefoot out into that unforgiving street

Let them them beg or steal or borrow, trying simply each day to help a family survive

benefit payments too small to make a difference to, we want to work but have to skiveope

No jobs on the boards or in the papers, every vacancy causing floods of forlorn hope

one job, two n=hundred applicants, jobcentres just another place for us all to sit and mope

Fat cats making more in bonuses in one year that we could ever earn in our whole lives

what do we say to our miserable children, how can we comfort our despairing wives?

The glib talk of a national average wagemakes each of us wantto rant and scream

three hundred plus in just one week is no more than some politician dream

Reality is one harsh mistress and she cares nothing for the false promises of help

her only goal is being honest, no matter how much it might make your family yelp

When you have to scrimp and scrape to even get te to to that poorly paid work

when fuel might mean a few meals less, is it any wonder the world went beserk?

The riots were bad, there is no denying that what so many did was so very wrong

but just for the briefest of moments in time those people finally felt so very strong

in charge of their own destinies, regardless of paying  the awful inevitable price

just to feel empowered for moments was, for most of them so incredibly nice

Please do not be so quick to judge those whose pain you quite simply can’t know

when you’re already at rock-bottom in life, there are very few places you can go

The protest was never about those material things people helped themselves to

but about the inequality in this country of ours between the likes of me and you

we already have nothing to live on and yet you want to take even more of it away

eacn morning is a nightmare wondering how to simply get through another grim day

we struggle each day for simple survival,  our morale has rarely ever been so low

still you pontificate, promising change soon and  telling us that you really do know

But unless you come down to our level, and live as you seem determined we must

you never will get us to listen to falsehoods nor ever deserve out trust