The Trade

Where is this freedom
Promised me
When first they told me
Work makes free?

I look around
And know I’m lost –
What’s free I buy
At such a cost

No youth, enjoyment
Holidays
Solid employment
Only pays

In minted coin
As all are robbed
Of our free time
We’re bobbed and jobbed

And pensioned off
Freely to freeze
As Winter brings us
To our knees

A lifetime spent
In servitude
While taking care
To save on food

Essentials only
Frugal thrift
Is hardly free
To those who drift

Through twilit streets
And shopping malls
In suits and boots
Or overalls

No longer knowing
Why they strive
For Freedom finds
Few left alive

Blame it on the boogie monster

Being a bitch
Will rarely make you rich
Get your drinks for free
Or your hard nose hitched

Though you’re sharp of tongue
It’s just a way of life
When self-censorship’s
No longer worth the price

Being a bitch
Is not a binary thing
So ‘Find your on/off switch’
Commands are hardly helping

How may one help improve
The mood of all we boff
Without the question, ‘Hey
What was it pissed you off?’

It’s more than a feeling

Magic we find in the strangest of places
sometimes ’tis lacking in belt and in braces
and costs not a sou, but is worth more than gold
for the memories last to the time we are old.
The shyest of all find they grow to a hero
when they hear the call of the sweetheart they seek.
The poor and the humble, the lackey, the zero,
when lover’s in trouble, become less than meek.
And these battles we fight, with the heart not the head
do not rob us of life, but they feed it instead
so we nourish the flame that we carry about
and our torch is a beacon, our song is a shout.
Do not mock at the magical daze you may see
when we walk hand in hand down the street, you and me,
for what some view as weakness, makes me brave and strong,
and do you really dare cry all mankind is wrong?

In praise of email

The art of writing letters to us now seems to be lost.
In part due to the postal strikes, and also to the cost.
For stamps are hard to come by, and envelopes expensive
And as we know delivery at times can be extensive.
Instead we have a new thing, an electronic toy.
So we can keep in touch despite the obstacles ahoy.
But somehow through the changes, our language has evolved.
Now we don’t spell our words out, but only write in code.
So now ‘I’ll c u l8r’, we often read out loud
Since spelling became optional, secrecy’s not allowed.
Thus I know all your business, even on the train,
In order to get the message, we need to make it plain.
Tis not the done thing these days to refuse an invitation.
By the time you’ve writ ‘washing my hair’, the train has left the station.

Comms…

I wish I were a telephone
I’d ring all night and day.
Could listen in on conversations
Hear what people say.
I’d never have to worry
When the quarter rolled around
My owner’d have to pay the bill
While I slept safe and sound.
Perhaps I’d be a portable –
The kind without a cord.
That way they’d take me with them
So I’d get to see the world.
Or maybe one where earpiece and
The mouthpiece can be split
Then I could wave at him
Whenever chat went on a bit.
Yes, all in all I reckon that
To be a phone’d be fun.
To spread the word from coast to coast,
Let mother reach her son.
But in this daily climate with
The cost of calls a-rise.
I worry that soon people will
Talk only with their eyes.

Christmas Shopping

Through mists of sleep I spread my wings
And soar past many fickle things.
All that bears glitter children prize,
Yet childlike, I, to my surprise
Can see no value in such stuff.
Though teen-hearts dream, I cry enough!
And long for far-off simple days
When gifts meant more than pleasure-craze.
I should not preach, but here I boil.
Why must we our children spoil?
For in the gifting of such trash
We barely feel the daily lash:
Consumers all! Now eat your sweets,
Break your toys, foul the streets!
But do not let me hear you say,
The old will do for me today!