SHEILDING

 Waiting for my vaccine,

Waiting for a jab,

Scuttling around my lonely flat

Like a homeless hermit crab

Watching bollocks on the box

About unshaven actors

Fighting inner demons.

It's all a load of cobblers

Pissed up, pissed off,

Locked down and  burned out,.

Gazing through the window

At the birds  down there

Feeding on the feeder

at least They can fly  away.

Lucky little bleeders

I have another drink and.

Wonder what I see?

A spirrel or a quarrakeat?

In the garden tree

do I see a sedge harrow?

A coldwinch, a pood region

Or a fartling?

I don't know.

I don't care.

I wander round.

From room to room

Not going anywhere

Waiting for my vaccine,

Waiting for a jab,

Rattling around my lonely flat,

Like a homeless hermit crab

 

presents and parcels

 

Once presents and parcels were special things

Only arriving on certain occasions

Carefully wrapped in layers of paper

Secured with sticky tape and string

By your friends and your relations,

Then opened to reveal objects of delight,

On days of celebration.

 

This is how It was long ago  

Now in middle class utopia

Traffic jams of delivery vans

Clog the crescents and groves of suburbia

Each vehicle driven

By a most miserable man

Overworked and underpaid

By the number of drops he does

A pittance for each delivery he has made

 

Meanwhile nearby the High Streets die

Shops coffined up by shutters,

Their doorways once carefully swept,

Are now niches where are rubbish collects:

 

And in Bleak Fields

Where motorways intersect

Large sheds have been erected

Computer governed inside

And roboticized

Here goods are packed and selected

With lorries streaming in

And the vans streaming out

Tons and tons and tons

Of stuff is moved about

And delivered to destinations

Where packaging is ripped off

And thrown away

As we build an all-consuming future

Living on top of garbage hills

Unpacking endless artefacts

Of course, this can last forever

Surely our planet cannot be finite,

If our demands are exponential