Mankind cannot without his neighbour’s heed

Survive, but cannot, will not, trust his neighbour’s lights

His guide his pride in oscillations frights

Him in himself and in his neighbour’s eyes

Sees keenly his own faithlessness and frailties

As another man’s, he owns his own noway

Thus consequence is ever someone else’s problem

That public squares are swept and malefactors put away

That police patrol and anti-virus scans

Are among his necessaries listed but are not prime

Reluctant spends

That make amends

Or at least pretends

To be a smart extempore half-solution

All our sins

Are shrink-wrapped packaged up in lurid marketable gear

To be a curse for someone else’s long and deprecating tear

The guy who’s old who cannot longer earn his bread

Who’s of good use no longer, waste should be dead

A liability

He has no clout no power and no sonorous name

Able to place his sympathies, opinons, in the frame

Likewise the children-losers in the gladeye sifts and shifts

Cultural orphans society makes in the giving out of gifts

Impromptu and obliquely

And oh, so nice and featly

By those whose clothes disclose them most advantaged

Among the echelons

As for to birth and worth and fore had opportunity

Like loaded dice predict them to obtain

Their ownership’s advantage and without the pain

And yet follows

The same old shows

Of merit, virtue - baubles planted by the same,

Whose shoes have most to lose and most to gain

And so refrain

And harp on justice, equity – a long pretence

In order to repair make good and hedge their fence

Around Lord Mammon’s Sunday best

No object loitering, swearing, in a stained string vest

Or half-habitual dabbler in wagering or in theft

Receives other but what he steals or chances; all bereft

Of education, parentage, of means to be

A human being of wondrous validity

Not only in the eyes of dapper proper persons

(The stakeholders of stuffs in various versions)

But also failed by human love, by kindliness’s glees,

Whose two-bit words are aired and spent like mawkish poetry’s

In concerned Houses’ over lamentation clauses

But buttering no parsnips nonetheless

Only assumed, beseemed, as seemly pseudo-prophylactics

But to no concern no feeling no despair

Like Furies swift pursuant of them in their chairs

As blights do rake

And mortally shake

The lowly lottery losers

Albeit sometimes outright bruisers

Spent like their nights in boosers

An unexamined life remains yet nothing worth the living

For usurpers in high places wearing faces unforgiving

As much as for the paupers of the broken civilization

Who all consider on themselves in meagre iron ration

As failures of our heritage and history

Throwing overboard its weight, a jettison for soft lollies

To come and master us and use us like as toys

To work on us its trickeries – like biddable girls and boys

And we, we headlong in

Rush to its vacuuming

All drawing hauling willingly our empty necks

Believing journey’s good - then there’s the sex

Always a lure and filip to procure -

Turn over the next channel and there’s always more

And more and more in surfeits of indulgence

A selling-off of self to sweet effulgence

Of paper fancies, sticky sweets retail

Whilst engines leave the tracks and coaches thunder off the rail

One holiday of havocs caught within its permanent bonds

Dressed up in fancy fashion-item clothing fronds

An instance and rebuke to onlookers in other lands

To keep their heads,

Going to their beds

In thanks to God, most humbly him confess,

And ask his guidance and that he might bless

A modest life and income, simple salutary fare

Of sober taste; in faith his good declare

A destination for unseemly revels courts us to our end

Unless we waken, to a better self and truth attend