You wake to see the roseate dawn
creep in the casement. Over the lawn
the world beckons, bathed in sunlight,
drenched in dew; then, stupendous sight,
the new decade mushrooming over
the world, bright as a supernova;  
and out beyond the garden gate
the perpetual Edenic state
that is the future, a gilt road
running on forever, flanked by
statues, modern day colossi,
the tow’ring technocratic Titans
who live to enrich, or enlighten,
not just themselves but everyone,
a veritable pantheon –
Gates, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Musk, Thiel –
of plutocratic godlings who steal
the sun’s radiance, who outshine
the moon and stars, and being divine,
life givers and restorers,
infuse creation with an aura
that mesmerizes and bewitches;
until a piece of scenery glitches,
a mountain vista pixelates,
and forms that should be bent go straight
and it’s revealed that someone’s lied:
this future has been CGIed;
and then you catch a musty whiff,
cloying and sweet, almost as if
something had died some while ago,
or shat, and all at once you know
it’s the miasmic stink that started
when Ayn Rand coughed
                          and Atlas sharted.
                          
Poetry on the Picket Line is a squad of like-minded poets putting themselves about to read their work on picket lines, in the spirit of solidarity. Invitations to rallies etc welcome, contact facebook.com/p/PicketLinePoets. The new Poetry on the Picket Line anthology is available at culturematters.org.uk