POEM: Visions of Change

Jenny turned twenty

And the clouds stayed as grey as they had been for decades

All the change that she

Thought she’d make had been swallowed and chewed up to nothing

So she packed up her dreams in a suitcase

And tossed them out to the sea

Edward came of age

He put down his rage, picked up a suit and a salary

Got his hair cut short

And his life, as a heart attack killed him at thirty

He drank to ignore how much he had changed

And died because he couldn’t forget

See the animals

Strutting with pseudo-importance

Feathers puffed out

See the flashy cars

See the lives that look so good on paper

But feel so cold

Dave was talented

Everyone knew it; he painted pictures that seemed alive

But they didn’t pay

For his rent, so he forsook the art for an office job

Lonely paintings got covered in dust

And his passion got burdened with rust

Kate tried changing things

Until she realised that nobody was listening

Sold her protest gear

Shed a final tear and settled down into acceptance

Did what she was told to instead

‘Til she put a bullet in her head

We got compromises

But no idea what it is

We compromise for

We’ve got proper ways

Of doing things and we don’t question

What makes them proper

It’s not that we’ve got no future, it’s worse

We can have whatever we want but we want to sacrifice meaningful life

For the comfort of this stultified status-quo

And a semi-existence as slaves to an uninspired blueprint of misery

And a child is born

Slapped about and thrown in amongst sharp-toothed conventions

From cradle to grave

Mentally enslaved

Into this corrupted culture

Another lamb brought to the slaughter

Another cog in the machine

And I lie awake

Full of questions of what hope I see for my species

And I don’t know why

But my questions leave me the hope for which I was seeking

For while many fall down by the wayside

There are more of us all lying awake

With visions of change