DENIAL OF DISABLED ACCESS TO THE ALASKA BUILDINGS
Kristofflambie-pie - you once, worryingly, quoted, 'too many
protest-singers, not enough protest songs' ; well -- Nothing [except
'Nebraska'] rhymes with 'Alaska' [sorry, viewers].
We don't want gays or cripples or niggers,
We've built the flats and done the figures.
Bermondsey blinds and artdeco-cool
We don't need folk who stagger or drool
Only bright new carp in our brandnew pool
We don't want gays or cripples or niggers,
We've built the flats and done the figures.
We sold the flats without a ramp
To folk so rich they could act un-camp
And pay the bloody government stamp!
We don't want gays or cripples or niggers,
We've built the flats and done the figures.
And now Keith Zerdin can be overheard in
The Local boasting to his mate Colin Serlin.
This Developer's Spell, this anti-Merlin:
"We didn't want gays or cripples or niggers,
We'd built the flats and done the figures,
If only these jagged internal jiggers .."
by
Helen Flint
your
disabled viewer.
I know, let's invent, said the Devil
A way for humans to get from one level
To another. So he made all central
Ramps have a zig-zag diagonal beville,
-with each step ever so slightly smaller than any foot -
AND SAW IT WAS GOOD AND CALLED IT
STAIR
STAIR
STAIR
STAIR
STAIR
STAIRS ........
Soon there were Downstairs and Upstairs
And - fair shares - for servants below stairs,
Going down .......... next stop ladies Underwear
The lift-boy wears a uniform and never swears,
BEWARE OF THE STAGGERED, UNEVEN STAIRS
OF OUR STAR STAMMERING UNAWARES.
Automaticaally sliding electric nightmare
Of escalators propelling you back Upwards .
In my dreams, the flat world below impairs
Me not, dares me, Tony-Blairs me,
And I fly like airborne prayers -
BEWARE OF THE STAGGERED, UNEVEN STAIRS
OF OUR STAR STAMMERING UNAWARES.
I need a spare self, a stairself
Repairs the despair as others saunter upstairs
[ lucky them, multimillionaires or just wrote
'no disabilities, thanks', in pre-natal questionnaires ]
While I, wheeled, wait, fighting back tears
And trying not to think, who cares?
The probs not theirs ....
BEWARE OF THE STAGGERED, UNEVEN STAIRS
OF OUR STAR STAMMERING UNAWARES.
Oh give me a world-share
A world without stair.
H Flint
Your disability is a bucket
Into which like dying fish your
Doctor can fling all your day to day
Sufferings, all your offerings of agony
Go in there, wriggle and die.
"No, don't worry," he'll beam -
"It's just your Fergal Dimentia, your
Mystonia playing up - nothing to worry about.
Not really migraine or flu or a broken leg
People like you don't get that."
People like me?
The subtext is - people who won't get better
With illnesses neither fatal nor curable;
People with convenient buckets.
"But doctor - I'm in agony. You have to help me."
"Tell you what - as a special favour, I'll ring
Your specialist and see what he says."
Days of pain pass in a blur.
"What did the Specialist have to say?"
"Oh sorry - just at the moment, he's away."
(Playing golf in the Antibes) "- but as
Soon as he's back, we'll be in touch."
Living a bucket-heavy life in his subtext
May I remind you what rhymes with BUCKET?
H Flint
It's fine to be black or
Lesbian or a single parent
But not disabled.
I am not Proud or Pleased.
Your prejudice is not what
Keeps me down -
It's my own fucking body.
I'd rather be like you
Please.
Let me swap
Just this once.
H Flint
- Helen Flint [Lawlor]
- 36 Grand Ave
- Southbourne,
- Nr. Bournemouth
- Dorset
- England
- BH6 3TA
- Nr. Europe
- Earth, Milky Way ...
- phone - +44- 012 - 022 - 48531
- EMAIL lawlor-flint@bournemouth-net.co.uk