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Sharing your creativity

May 22 2020
Thank you for reading our Health & Wellbeing in a Crisis booklet and then sharing your fantastic words and images created during lockdown. Contributions from Chris Bird, Raymond Reilly, Rosie Roksoph, Chris Sampson, Sheila Wells and Alyson. If you want to see your work published here, please email nicola@thepavement.org.uk


BELOW: Chris Sampson considers mask wearing from an unusual point-of-view.

I Am A Facemask by Chris Sampson

Reports of halitosis have plummeted, worldwide, to an all-time low since the outbreak of Covid-19. You’re welcome…

We facemasks help keep you humans safe from Coronavirus. We also smell your morning breath, your fags and booze, your stinky food furtively scoffed. We see your smiles, your grimaces, your cavernous yawns.  We hear - feel - your words pass through us; your laughter, your moans, your lies and truths, your hopes, fears and surreal babble.

In return? You customise us, decorate us, Hannibal Lector-mask us. Dispose of us, discard us, replace us once were clogged with the dust of your cities, the pollution of your cars, the filth of the diseases caused by human activity.

No thanks asked, none give. You’re welcome…    


BELOW: Chris Bird's Soviet people for VE Day. (CB)


BELOW: POEM SUBMITTED BY S A WELLS

Social Distance
Sonia's getting hitched in Hitchin
I wonder what I'm supposed to be missing
The grass is green the birds are singing
Terry's in his garden digging, digging, digging
Everywhere it's peaceful and quiet
Though not a lot going on tonight
Choir's postponed
The people have gone
Gina's at home singing their song
Families are out riding their bikes
Others indoors seeing the sites
Tomorrow is V.E. day
Let's meet again soon
The shops will be open
And hairdressers too.

BELOW: From Rosie Roksoph (c) RR


BELOW: Islington Beautification team from Rosie Roksoph (c) RR



BELOW: POEM SUBMITTED BY Raymond Reilly from Glasgow

Room with a view

 

My life has become obsolete, a cardboard box which barely covers my feet, a room with a view of the street where my life was once complete.


People walk past and look at me with pity but I don’t want their pity I just want to be like most of them and have a nice job in the city.


Winter is creeping in and the cold is biting at my feet, I could do with a hot meal and a comfy seat.


My body is aching with pain and my room with a view is covered in rain. How long will it last before someone comes along and gives me a break for goodness sake?


A coin lands in a paper cup, it’s the first of the day, but barely enough to help me on my way from this pain and misery I’m faced with each day.


===

Acrostic H-O-M-E-L-E-S-S poem from Alyson (May 2020)

 

Homelessness, such a loneliness, yet it lives amongst mankind.

 

Only until you’ve experienced it will you open your eyes really wide.

 

Myself I can speak, I’ve been in all weathers bleak, supposedly done this to myself.

 

Even when I try, in a place warm and dry, the mentality is not always safe.

 

Living in your room, anxiety conspires taking you back to the concrete walkway.

 

Even elderlys are evicted. For this country they have fought, yet left all alone in their so-called home. It’s not really funny, coz the Government wants money from our patriots who are still kicked out in the cold!

 

So why is there a problem? Plenty room for all and sundry, Britain’s not playing great it’s only hungry for its bloody money.

 

Sleep well you angels that have left us, dying loveless in a street. Let’s try to protect the ones still with us, instead of stepping over feet.

 

 

 <ends>

 



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April – May 2024 : Compassion

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