All those long lost, still, warm, thick summer days,
When butterflies struggle to flap their wings,
Ants retreat down into cool deep dug nests,
Birds shelter beneath leafy canopies.
When the air is as an old overcoat,
Engulfs your body, and fills up your lungs.
When thin clouds form above valleys below,
Imperceptible wisps and swirls at first,
Pressure rise and heat pulls moisture from earth.
As billowed white pillows turn darkest grey,
That thick earthy smell of rain on the wind,
Before the storm at the close of the day.
This is how it feels at this point in time.
Climate change, and economic failure
Joined in an obscene troilist tango
By a souped up, mutating, pandemic,
Are on a crash course to global meltdown.
This, the collapse of capitalism,
Was never forecast to happen this way,
Never in one almighty, chaotic,
Cataclysm of human stupidness.
Who can comprehend the sheer negligence
Of elitist global politicians.
The fucked anarchic internet structure,
Infects people’s minds with software somas,
Leaving them in thrall to techno wizards,
And their addictive artificial worlds.
Such atomisation negates action,
At the very moment when mass revolt
Is needed far more than ever before,
People are enslaved to online servers.
In the real world thin veneers peel away,
Destitute nouveau jobless, brought low by
Furlough, lockdowns, floods, fake news, false prophets,
Bamboozled by naked complexity,
Cannot survive without charged up smartphones.
When we should all be coming together,
Millions of thumb twiddlers clutch consoles.
Whilst public services vanish into
Private thiefdoms that suck our coffers dry,
Gamer junkies wind up almost insane,
Burnt out by adrenaline addiction.
Meanwhile, all around, the latest version
Of the new world order is fucked this time.
MSM looks like a Matrix remake,
All frontline services stretched to limit,
Yet, despite all of this, how we long for,
Stormclouds to break,rain and hail to cease,
That line of red tinged gold to appear on,
Horizon, and slowly explode into
Giant sunset where roses tinge with gold.
To attain this we need revolution.
Xanadu has to be more attractive,
Than Fortnight, Fifa, Scrabble or TikTok.
If we cannot tear these people away,
Sunsets and gold roses? Not anymore.

Harry Rogers, in the yellow room 25th December 2020.