Rotten Vulture

Atop a statue once depicting liberty,
Perches a foul creature,
An avian actor,
Decaying piece by ruinous piece,
A scavenger feigning regality,
A vulture wearing the feathers of an eagle,
Mould and droppings falling upon a flag,

Nonetheless this animal is loved and reviled both,
Regarded in both sycophantic and tyrannical aviaries,
It wants not for fodder,
The carcass of a republic lies below,
So it rends at putrid meat no longer protected,
Picking at the scraps of the citizenry,
The flesh of a populace with potential,

Each wing of this beast is dyed an opposing shade,
One crimson,
The other a dull blue,
Battling over which part to gnaw at,
Even as they rot and fester,
But make no mistake,
Both factions are wings of the same rotten vulture.

Incorruptible

Life can be a market street,
Neon and sin in equal measure,
Glitzy lights mask the horrors behind,
Roads teeming with snake oil salesmen,
Moral vampires hiding in alleyways,
Vulturine hounds slavering for hours of your life,
You need to keep your chequebook shut and turn away,
Despite their honeyed words,
They do not mean well,

They are artists of heartbreak,
Painting red skies and earthquakes,
Architects of every inferno under the sun,
You need to be strong,
Permit no chink in your plate mail,
No hint of manipulation,
These ghouls would take you into their rotten fold,
Don’t let them stain your blood,
Be incorruptible.

Datastream

We are all data,
Little binary toys,
A horde of zeroes,
Leashed to digital space,

Simply prey to a carnivorous system,
Swimming like salmon through databases,
Pushing all of the opulence upstream,
While being picked off by bears in taxman gown,

We are just numbers to be counted,
A sticker book collection,
For some child in a highborn office,
A creature with a taste for silver spoons.

House Of Relics

There’s a house on a river,
Tan and gothic in aesthetic,
Accompanied by a grand clock,
It’s a house of relics,
And I don’t mean antiques,
Red and blue in blood,

Sat along benches feigning opposition,
Breathing naught but dust and hot air,
They pass edicts destroying millions,
Guffawing and cheering like children,
Starvation and poverty are the gifts they offer,
The serfs shall be happy with crumbs,

They’re despicable little men,
Fat cats in silly wigs,
A deceitful gentleman’s club,
Just out for their chums,
It seems they’ve packed this flophouse out,
The house now only holds whispers of fraud,

You may ask,
Has honesty ever graced its halls?
Well there was this one Guy called Fawkes.

Crash Machine

In these times,
Following the book of 1985,
All smokestacks and cameras,
We are thrown ahead as fodder,
Little cogs in the machine,
In to a world full of radiation and bad men,
We are crash test dummies,
Emphasis on dummies,

Coins in a grinder,
Crashing along government lines,
Amongst all the other wreckages,
All part of some smoking room plan,
All we are worth is what we can withstand,
What we can suffer,
But this is no simulated test,
This is real blood and guts life.

Pondlife

Do we appear as pondlife to them?
Those alleged councillors of repute,
From their gilded office above us,
With their manifestos made of bread,
Are we just guppies and tadpoles?
Schools of fish with empty heads,
Covered in muck from the streets,
Our murky waters,
Polluted and trash-ridden as they are,

They drop breadcrumbs down to us,
Placations and silvered words,
And giggle as we bite and nip each other,
Tearing scales from one another,
Amused as we keep hunting our fellows,
Not looking above the surface,
They smirk at the chum they bestowed us,
The bubbles trying in vain to show us the way,
To where our real predators reside.

Adventure

As the timeless adage decrees,
Man must explore,
To blaze trails,
Cross malms and seas,
The very astral lanes above,

In our collective consciousness,
There is a primal need for the next sight,
Each step falls upon a new time zone,
Conquering hazard and fauna both,
Striving for the exotic,

The labour is a double-edged cutlass,
Even as they discover new opportunities,
Pray for the adventurers,
It is their achievements that are exploited,
Turned to corrupt purpose.

Chess With Lives

To the fat cats,
In their heinous smoking rooms,
Life and the world are games of chess,
They are kings and queens in boardrooms,
While the bishops are no more than shills,
Preaching their version of the rules,

On this globular chessboard,
We are all teak pawns,
Serfs to faceless chess masters,
The knights have already routed,
The rooks already crumbled to dust,
Mere vestiges of fair play,

We are thrown at each other with abandon,
Smashed into atoms,
All our colours becoming red then brown,
They play for their own ends,
They play with our lives,
There is no endgame.

Empires Of Sand

Every day I seem to witness,
With drawn eyes,
News stories that make me seethe,
Built-in inequality,
Bankers in the slaughterhouses of Wall Street,
Political duplicity,

Impotent old men upon the beaches of society,
Building sandcastles in imperial styles,
Houses of cards,
With sands of ground-up people,
Little voters at the bottom of the ladder,
Each spadeful shrieks in dissent,

The sands mount tall,
Kept strong on designs of grim architects,
The castles are patted down with manifesto lies,
The old men cheer as they rise,
When will the tide come,
And tear these foul empires down?