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Poet's Corner

NEW YEAR HANGOVER

05-01-2009

The Stirrer's poet laureate Brendan Hawthorne marks the arrival of the New Year in reflective mood.

It was a year of sales and receivership
liquidising assets and stock
Savings Banks turning their collective
interests to saving banks
And as the rock of ages trembled
market shares took a tumble
before Gordon threw money at it
and calmed it all down by
papering over the cracks
in the institutional wall of finance
But as calendars turn another year
and diaries get a brand new entry
the cash crows have already
settled in for a sales frenzy
They’ve picked and mixed
over old favourite retail outlets
Dissected bargain carrion
with a looter’s mentality
jostling for seniority at the till
Miracle event walking sticks
became gainfully employed
in blocking strategies
and pushchairs and shopping trollies
become ram-raid alternatives
for the ‘must have at this price’ rush
No-one seemed to be counting the job losses
unless the consequences of closure
scored a direct hit on a known individual
And as the wonder of Woolies dims on the horizon
the likes of which will never be seen again
the marauding fickle magpies
will seek out more shining examples
of poor investment
over-ambitious trading
and a too-slow-to-change identity
In these days of free market coin tossing
we enter the thirtieth anniversary
of the election of that great charmer (anag.)
Mrs T.
I hope she’s pleased with herself
now we’re seeing
the demise of retail and service sector left-overs
We have nothing left to sell
other than pensions and
with a diminishing return on wealth
the supermarket shelves of a once Great Britain
are now bare reminders
in a corner shop in a backwater of Europe
and I hope that Mrs T. and her believers can see
that we can no longer manufacture
an answer to recession
now we have very little capacity left to make
in the workshops of this inventive nation
And I hope she realises that the forgotten generation
of us nineteen seventies dole queue teenagers
are fast becoming the forgotten generation
of job-seeking middle-agers
and ultimately pensionless
old age pensioners