How we wept for you

And admired your humour and strength

Turned a blind eye to your occasional transgressions

Supported your coming to terms with your new self

Remarkable, we said

But we misunderstood you

The deep hurt

The generational harm

It was all about you

Your survival

The need to protect yourself at all costs

The freedom to hurt others

Get your retaliation in first

Suppress any condemnation

(however meek or mild)

With a swift and well-practiced raised finger

‘Remember’

It seems we did not know you at all

Now this

Horror born of needless trauma

Makes a mockery of our naivety

Lord, we feel ashamed

And all we have left is

The deepest

Darkest

Disappointment

Too late

All those tipping points

Upturned by reckless Oil

And their paid and unpaid fellow travellers

Have trashed this place

And left us in the early hours

Of the last morning after

The last party ever

(2026)

Sat down in the park, just taking the air

Up comes some geezer with his trendy grey hair

Says - what's up with you, you look a little blue

I said - the world is just so shit and unfair

And just like any Sunday, I'm contemplating Monday

With a certainty that everything is wrong

He says - you're not wrong there, but those that really care

Will still be here to help us all along

(he said) An underpaid teacher is no ordinary creature

And the guy who brings your groceries is king

All the nurses and the doctors, and the boats an helicopters

Who rescue refugees who cannot swim

Never mind the reckless, the lazy, rich and feckless

History will judge them bright and clear

And we'll just stick together, and we'll wait for better weather

And we'll never let ourselves give into fear

I looked to the  to the left and I looked to the right

Stared at the daylight, got lost in the night

I turned my head to the unnecessary dead

And I counted them and counted them again

You work to live in poverty, that doesn't seem quite right to me

Honesty's reward is simple pain

Losers pay their taxes, winners tilt the axis

Point their rockets further into space

(y'all don't come back now)

An underpaid teacher is no ordinary creature

And the guy who brings your groceries is king

All the nurses and the doctors, and the boats an helicopters

Who rescue refugees who cannot swim

Never mind the reckless, the lazy, rich and feckless

History will judge them bright and clear

And we'll just stick together, and we'll wait for better weather

And we'll never let ourselves give into fear

(2021 - revised 2026)

The city with no cars

Will sink beneath the shallow waters

Like a broken layer cake SUV

Towed to oblivion by

St Mark and his four Roam horses

Of the apocalypse

(2026)