The Culture twists and shrieks, wracked by
violent spasms of regression, recoiling in
pain and terror, contracting inwards
like some giant spider god dying.

Maybe snake oil will
offer a cure.
Perhaps we can
purge the demons
by drilling the right
holes in the right
skulls.  We could try
electro-shocking our way
back to 'normal'.  We
might even rediscover
the benefits
of leeches.  

We're building walls
and burning bridges.
We're forgetting the
lessons we never quite
learned.  We're watching
ourselves watching ourselves
watching ourselves on
an endlessly repeating loop
of tiny glowing screens.  We
willingly downsize our
worlds until we have to make
ourselves smaller, just
so we can still fit.

The future is closer
than we realise.  It's just
not as big as we
thought it would be.

Never enough.
Never enough of anything.
It's always running low,
running out.
Money, energy, time.

The fuel gauge
threatens empty.
The bank balance
teeters and tips
into the red.
Almost out of smokes, and there's
one last shot
in the bottle.
The car tax expires
in two days.

You've been
exhausted
since forever.
You can't kid yourself
that you're young any more.
Clocks tick
just to **** with you.
It's dark, but
not as dark
as it gets.

There are no right answers.
The sky rejects the birds, turns them
over to gravity,
embedding them in the concrete and dirt.
The grit refuses to become a pearl,
just as the wound refuses to heal
and the flesh eats itself.
The market sees a sudden spike in
sales of Champagne and cyanide.
Coordinated efforts seek and fail
to curtail the rising tide of violence
in the nation's dreaming.
You realise that this crude, barbaric language
that you can't understand
is your own.
Beauty glitches and pixelates.
Frightened, furtive confessions of love
are unheard over proud, visceral
proclamations of hate.
Tongues divorce mouths.
Every now and then, a voice
inside your head says,
'Thud.'
The measures of sanity become
more quantifiable and
totally arbitrary.
The horizon
tightens
like
a noose.

It doesn't matter if this is wrong.
There are no right answers.

To be more
than the shame
staining my skin
a pallid shade
of grey,
would be more
than the dreams,
painting the windows
of my mind
with a rosy tint,
of hope
of chance;
it would be
all.

But,
is this pinkish-haze
from the comfort
of reveries,
as I’m enveloped
in velvety corolla?
Or are these
the malignant,
sardonic
barbs,
that foretell
my fate
as a truthless soul
in an honest
reality?

Just know
in the name of greed
as business’s
influence grows
you become
less than a cog.

You are interchangeable
in any job.
You can be discarded
no matter how hard
you worked.

Integrity,
Honesty,
Loyalty,
are just
shiny
but
empty
words.

That is what it means
when the free market
rules the world.