We were building perfect prisons while pretending we were free.
We were making boys fuck German Shepherds for democracy.
We all voted for the man who said he’d close Guantanamo:
we were suckers for a winning smile, a poster captioned HOPE.
We were killing from the comfort of a luxury hotel,
paid for on the credit card. Don’t ask and never tell
was how it worked. Submitting our unitemised receipts:
everyone was doing it. We ought to have a piece
of all the new prosperity, the end of boom and bust.
History had ended: in the Market we would trust.
The few who might object would catch a bullet from our drones:
we’d tut and say ‘the future, eh?’ Then back to Game of Thrones.
It never would have lasted. For a while we thought it would.
We took their money, did their work, pretended we were good.
From the Southbank Centre balcony we’d look across the Thames
and see a world that worked. We will not see that world again.
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