Wednesday 2 October 2013

A review of me from Monday Night (30/9/13)


Awh, Thank you.


'Jonathan Eyre brings his poetry to life with a performance style that speaks of the theater; every word spoken just so to leave the perfect imprint on the listeners mind. His poem about ME I heard for the second time tonight, and if anything it only moved me more upon repetition.'


Full review athttp://soundsoftime.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/post-box-poets-the-return/

More on M.E. - for those that would like to share
Jonathan says: "Having written for all my life, I have found that poems do sometimes work, not just as an expression of one's own position and frustrations, but as a link to others, giving a hint of what M.E. does to the individual, the abilities it affects, and the day to day reality of living with the repercussions. To this end I would like to submit to you three poems, reflecting some stages of trying to deal with M.E., and to try and get a few wins and some sort of life back."

http://www.actionforme.org.uk/get-informed/about-me/living-with-me/poetry-corner/jonathan-eyre

Saturday 15 June 2013

Night and Day Robbery - M.E. LIKED


Posted this on Chronic Fatigue/ME FB page as a response to some sad and difficult morning posts on there recently about waking up and feeling like death, and how 'others' don't get it, that this is a chronic condition, it don't just go with more sleep or a better attitude, this is what it is......



Jonathan Eyre
Night and Day Robbery
hang-over mornings
and no alcohol or drugs taken:
so typical of this disease that
robs us even of the joy of solo or social
settings of stimulant misuse.
Stolen moments replaced
with the hours of
down sides alone.
Another morning 'sobering up'
to M.E.s painful partnership.

Wednesday 10 April 2013

Always in the top ten - disability discrimination, state sponsored and coming in under your radar


'In ancient Greece a cripple or beggar or criminal (the pharmakos) was cast out of the community, either in response to a natural disaster (such as a plague, famine or an invasion) or in response to a calendrical crisis (such as the end of the year).' [wikipedia]

Dibs is on disabled people.............always top of the list apparently, and still coming in high, and always in the top 10!


Disability sanitised

We have never left the shores of ignorance behind,
merely built new piers and breakwaters of attitudes
to hold back the tide of internal change.

Superstitions re-sown
re-ironed labels
re-attached.

Through generations
secrecy re-engaged,
society's invisible balm.

Charitable attitudes and state justified attacks
now tuned to frameworks of benevolent policy and ramped access.
All crumble behind the real walls of gate keepers

paid to close the doors,
paid to measure the length
of one's subservience to another's power

For us to listen to their handed down justifications;
to limit who we are,
who we can become,

to risk our lives to their callous hands, made,
it would seem, from empty promises
and condescending eyes,

conscience paid-off
the tab cleared,
spun on a purpose far from public sight,

set on courses not even you know of,
rather not seen at all,
or perceived, a vision hidden,

seemingly etched into
the fabric of fear, veil fixed,
nailed to your closed

form filling
box ticked
mind.





Thursday 7 February 2013

Two New Poems Going down well......

I have now performed these two poems at several events and they seem to be picking up both the mood of disability destruction now unleashed in the UK, one helping to highlight this inhuman media manipulated attack on the disabled and the other the human need to awaken our inner world and provide the space and creativity to we need to grow. Not changing is not an option any-more.

It might be one step forward two steps backwards, but with your help it can be one step forward no steps backwards.

Always at poetry events  I feel the need to recite at least one poem about the active and outrageous attack on the disabled being carried out here in the Eng Ger Land, started by Blairites, and now championed in gold meddling position, by the apparently Joseph Goebbels inspired Ian Dunkin Smythe, Minister of Big Lie Propaganda.

Yesterday Lemn Sissay dropped into the 'Wicked Words', the first open mic night for 2013 and a special night it was too, with a sparkling array of poets.

Here are my 2 poems. Read and Live!


BLUE BADGE DENIAL
Blue
Badge
disability-denial,
is now cranked up,
all            the                way                 to 11!
But it is no joke!
Will 'you'
all be
not-talking
about
‘the Disappeared'
soon?
“Where have Doris and Arthur gone?”
“Oh I don’t know, they had to be moved because they had a spare bedroom”
“No, I’ve not heard from them since, still, probably for the best eh?!”

The talons of the Government’s ‘joy-through-work’ rhetoric
cut a deep-ploughed furrow.
Layers of our minds lie exposed.
The bed-rock of our morality cracking
under steel-toed echoes of the Nazi-Flag led
social-solution for the ‘unproductive’ and ‘inferior breeds’.
The call to hate repeated through the Media Empire.
……’and the ways to make life impossible for the ‘unproductive’ are so varied’…..

We, the disabled, are
functionality-tested and emotionally undressed.
Intimately exposed.
The insect object of these powerful
nameless
arbiters
and their bureaucracies;
“all questions will be answered!”

Showered by their computer scripted
‘exclusion tones’.
Scrouted by those non-medical gate-keeping
‘professionals’,
the successors to the railway clerks of the ‘Transports’,
Just ‘filling in the forms’ to move this very different cargo.
Our intimate knowledge of our health and ourselves ignored.
Examined and Re-examined and re-examined
for observation purposes alone,
our inabilities and impairments repeated
a liturgy, a prayer of hope
uttered as much to ourselves, alone,
as to these banks of public and private ‘partnerships’
who wait for us to fall down, to be tripped up,
To be sent back to the end of the queue, with all benefits cancelled.
We are repeatedly turned-inside out,
Like the innards of slugs salted to an exploding death,
or like a snail, eye-hooked from its shell for the 100th time
to be told to get back into it,
“stop complaining”
“learn to live a work-justified life …….!”
or else what?

The Pall of death of our lives is hanging
over all of us disabled; right now!
............we can smell the pyre and hear its muffling approach..... …
bushfires …………………………of the darkening night of discrimination.


For the Government’s ‘Scrounger War-Mongerers’
peddling their pre-set health-scam re-justifications,
people like myself with M.E
are some of the first to fall-foul,
are the easy target to out-run and smother,
down-graded to lesser and lesser persons
in their pursuit of ‘Their’ defined ‘Equality’.

We, the victims of discrimination, have the right to define equality; Not them!

“All will be rounded up and tested for fitness!”
That is the order,
that is what is being done now
in this En ger land.
all will be placed into the public’s redefined
and media created
money-saving work-shy group!
I can feel the station platform under our feet
hear the clank of a steam engine as it stands waiting for our departure,
today’s plain-clothed troops
in their anonymous business-centre, 
making it all seem ordered and unthreatening
to those that by stand.

The orders have been issued
only no-one can ever trace the words to the leaders,
their smiles denying that they can be seen as deliberately cruel,
merely rational
 in these times of “hard  economic……………..
 choices.”
“pursuing justice for the tax payer”
for you and you and you.
Waging a war on the redefined and growing ‘undeserving’.
No command for the ‘Final Solution’ was ever recoded,
Just fulfilling the ‘Will of the People’, it seemed.

….and some will be declared ‘the worthy’
and can have charity done to them,
by corporate sponsors, or supermarkets of choice,
so you
can choose
to whom
you prefer…..
to give……………
                                 if you like.
Charities queuing up to help to appease.
….and some may be pulled from this war-carnage of envy and spite
but what of us others,……………………………………………….
what of us others………………………..
what of us?


***


Birds in Your Heart

Have the birds
of your heart
deserted you,
gone away and left you?
Have the songs of your heart been silenced?
Do not fear.
If asked
they will return; These
heart birds need
only to be asked.

Create a space;
Nature abhors a vacuum.
Call the birds to the aching
and one day they will return to you,
and sing in the morning
and through the day,
and at night,
and even at times,
Call the sun,
the moon,
and the stars;
To shine
for you.

Jonathan Eyre September 2012







Thursday 3 January 2013

Poetry 7.30 pm Wednesday January 16th 2013



Defying Disability, Ignorance and Denial, 
"Is it because I am disabled?"

LCA Poetry evening Hosted by Me, 
at the HEART Centre in Headingley, Leeds.
7.30 pm Wednesday January 16th 2013
All welcome to read in the second half of the evening.
Entrance £3.00/£1.00 concessions and members

Photo: Defying Disability, Ignorance and Denial, 
"Is it because I am disabled?"

LCA Poetry evening Hosted by Jonathan Eyre, 
at the HEART Centre in Headingley, Leeds.
7.30 pm Wednesday January 16th 2013
All welcome to read in the second half of the evening.
Entrance £3.00/£1.00 concessions and members