Poet’s Corner

AFTER THE 9 CARAT GOLD RUSH

30-04-2008

Welcome to the “United Blingdom” where shell-suited chavs queue up to flog off their sovereign rings and cash in on the rising price of gold. Brendan Hawthorn wonders where Gerald Ratner is now.

The queue outside the street corner jeweller’s

resembled a sports field washing line

Smoking shell suits lined up military style

marching ever onwards towards

the doorway realisation of fashion-style investments

That and a gold standard surrender to hard currency

The scene is full of tragedy and comedy

Relative adversity bringing the

concept of world order to the High Street

surfing on an economy driven tidal onrush

A bar graph upturn in paper fortune

getting the desired panic sell off

as images of a gilt-edged united blingdom are observed

glinting in a moment of modern England’s glory

Bedecked with bullion medallions

they stand at the trade counter

not of middle men

but of worn out mineworkers

whose collective lungs can consume no more dust

whose racked bodies can move no more ore

whose scrubbed tables will carry no more food

once exhaustion and viability hits the seams

They are left forgotten behind the swigging ring pulls

of extra strength special brews with

the filtered stench of processed nicotine

and the romantic glow of mobile screen radiation

A dollar sign tipping point stands guard at the scales

outweighing any sentimental tendencies

as curb and rope are transformed

into folding portraits of the monarchy

Meanwhile the ring ting ding of bling tubs

are registered into ‘by-the-sack-full’ deposit vaults

armed, ready and awaiting the mercy of a meltdown

in an uptown global village of free market devices

A design left behind to consume all

in the next phase of corporate profiteering

As celebration cans are left in the gutter

As fag ends spiral in street corner whirlwinds

As the credit crunch snacks on the hand that once fed

As families starve in the third world

As people suffer in squalid hardship

As children get poisoned on computer hard drive dumps

As humans die when hands no longer reach mouths

As the first world simply jerks another chain

for the rest to humbly follow in procession

lining up the 9-carat gold rush.

Copyright Brendan Hawthorne 2008