The Cherries in Benefit Pies
The Tale of Tom Brown
This is the tale of Tom Brown
A young man who drowned
Himself as drunk as a skunk
In binge-drinking sessions
Then ‘ecstacied’ himself
Into the depths of depression
Spiralling downwards,
He sunk,
Sunk,
Sunk…
Until he ended up in intensive care
As his liver needed an emergency repair
He had more than his fair share
Of morphine while in there
It was his latest supply
In getting by getting high
While in care
His poor health
Was soon to be rewarded
By the government accorded
With new sums of wealth…
The outright ownership of a
Massive Victorian 2 bedroomed flat to start with
On the best street in town or there around
Worth £ 150 k -
- the estate agents say -
And that’s just the figure to start with
He brings home a state wage -
- £ 1000 a month of your tax pay
£10 of which he tries to put aside to pay
His ‘benefit reduced’ council tax
Straight away and without delay
Before the rest, he eagerly blows away…
On top quality skunk
Crack cocaine, and plain cocaine
And sometime heroin - ‘Brown’
And he goes out all the time
To the best clubs in town
Where he orders bottle after bottle
Of champagne or the finest wine to glug
And gets himself well blottoed
Then crawls home, like a bloated slug
As for going on holidays
He uses ‘Direct Payment’ always
- the cherry heaped on top
Of the golden crusted benefit pie
Which he gladly reaps like a prize
And no holiday is too expensively steep in price
And it pays for all his expenses
And his upkeep - nice !
And if he so wishes to stay abroad
To cash in his 200k flat of rent-free board
He is confident that our government
Will still pay his state wage
For him to continue to live his days - scored
Inside his coke-filled, crack-fuelled daze - abroad
As reported to Jane Air
Written in mid-2008 - so figures mentioned
in the poem will have applied to then.
