The Department of No Jobs and Pitiful Pensions would like to invite you to attend unavoidable 7 days a week 52 weeks every year  demoralisation training you will learn all about lack of opportunity be well prepared for living at home forever or get the life changing opportunity of relocating onto the streets flat coloured specialists from the uncivil service will offer a priceless new brand of IAG (misaligned) information (horizontal) advice (pumice stone) guidance hand out non-descript instructions to write a uniform curriculum vitae full of forlorn hope demonstrate the rhythm method of smoke and broken mirror hand claps and the beat of deceit repeatedly remind you it is all about mastery in 21st century capitalist control where elite cronies sell one in a thousand possibilities of dead end jobs and peddle the dream of lucky old you forty years down the line riddled with malignant drudgery

Darren J Beaney is part of a collective that hosts Flight of the Dragonfly, a regular spoken-word night in Brighton and on Zoom. His debut pamphlet Honey Dew was published last year by Hedgehog Poetry Press. 21st-century Poetry is edited by Andy Croft, email [email protected]