The Hand Biter

I read this, mourning, morning’s missive

Promise to daybreak scribbler

In his capture of the fading image

Underneath him patronage

And scything saker air

How he hung on the wistful words of a whim in blind ignorance

Then drop, dropped down and broke beaked

Flushed clean as a turd round the U-bend

The glass descending stoops low to stick him,

His part unending, click boxed and ticked,

A disabled and a crippled thing

Mute poetry and candour retract, oh, flair, flight, flame, here

Griddled! AND the unsung stories not penned, a million

Still-birthed characters, are lost to us. So unequal here!

No wonder of it: click tick box makes funds go further -

Fine - and disabled writers, ah poor dears,

Stall, see themselves as trash, ash, black ordure.

An offering for National Poetry Day. This came to me after Literature Wales gave me the Disabled Person's Support Grant (with the words "we wish you'd applied for more") but, despite being shortlisted for the third time, not an actual writer's bursary. So they're happy to pay non disabled people to support me, just not disabled people to write... It is also, of course, for lovers of Gerard Manley Hopkins and falcons in flight everywhere

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