freedom is the gift of consumer choice,
of credit cards that smile equally
upon us all, the great social leveller
that’s elevated above and regardless
of race, gender, religion or orientation,
in our consumer utopia freedom means
selecting the correct mobile phone,
and freedom is defined by what
we’re free from, we are liberated
from both ideology or conformity,
freedom determines our independence
from the necessity to believe or commit,
neither community nor expectations,
free from meaning or from having
any natural obligation towards others,
we’ve bartered freedom for choice between
a dozen identical products and services,
we save the planet through the gift
of our targeted purchasing power,
the only thing we can’t buy is simple,
your credit rating is the true measure
of your soul, the great egalitarian state
for which history has been waiting
it shapes our desires
then fulfils our dreams,
in our consumer utopia
everyone is finally equal
.
Andrew Darlington
.
BORN FREE
in a contortion of language
worthy of Harry Houdini
the President
of American Magicians
and immigrant from Hungary
who observers believed
could unlock the connecting
ball and socket bones on his own
peculiar skeleton and so escape
from drowning in a sack behind
a curtain, or squeeze through
bars in prisons, hang in shackles
from a gibbet attached by moral
engineering to the towering wall
of a medieval castle, or a modern
building in a modern city above
a shark-infested river, a moat
of poisoned spikes, piranha fish
Israel is only defending itself
from the children it is killing
in Gaza
on the West Bank
Syria, Iran and Lebanon, the Yemen
anywhere and nowhere
that someone dared to look at them
Comment by Steven Taylor on 19 June, 2025 at 10:46 amwithout respecting their position
as the greatest of the greatest place
in the history of Earth’s existence