A Quality of Life
(jayn Feb 2018)
Two little boys
skip joyfully across this shitty little street
glad that dad gave them the privilege
of opening the big electric gate
Milk and honey in a remote control
Oh how it yawns
revealing the wooden worker’s castle
defended by ramparts of brick and render
meant to impress
Such splendid humble shouts
exclusion
though we are not the enemy
We’re doomed if success
is a cage that boys run from
chasing balls without fields to play in
Shitty little boxes squeezed together
so tight the cars that get bigger
as egos get bigger
as profits get bigger
don’t fit
narrow streets and narrow houses
made for poor men who walked to work
never imagining an architect’s fantasy
out the front
hiding shitty little yards
worth a million dollars
for the view
of other shitty little yards
Inward, it all looks inward
where out is a window
switched on like light
Same thing every night
We’re doomed if success
is a maze that boys run from
chased by pixels
See how they run
like the real thing
in a screaming screen dream
drugged
I walked in a forest down by the sea
it sounded like the world had ended to me
That din of materialism resoundingly expressed
as modernity’s cacophony caging wilderness
The city is rising on rubble and stumps
heaving out of chasms and holes between walls
an invading army
fed on the chilled aspic of modular trends
Decks as big as backyards bulge
out the back
compulsorily attended
by the clutter of cheap
crowded hopefully for the plastic feast
same as the ones down the street
It’s a formula that made
humble, make-do and tea-towelled cakes
extinct
We’re doomed if success is
what we have
and not what we could be
without it
redleaves 