For what is Consumerism?

What do we really need in life?

Lots more shoes? A fancy car?

Gadgets? The latest phone?

More gadgets? Massive TVs?

Brand-name clothes? Big houses with too much space?

Extra gadgets? Designers kettles? Sparkly trinkets?

Alcohol? Porn? Alcohol and porn?

Less woodland? Poisoned rivers?

Death to the unborn? Poisoned Lakes?

Poisoned seas? Poisoned minds?

Yet more stress? Yet more desire?

Yet more greed? What do we really need in life?

Consumerism.

Look at the industry that advertises lust,

depicts the must-have and must-see

and though it’s not free it may as well be

for we buy an escape.

Observe the greasy corporate comptrollers of capitalism,

how they plunder our children, our world and our lives

selling us a legacy of shit. Yet we buy into it.

Who’s the fool and who’s the king?

Who sells blood for diamond rings?

Who kneels before the fetid altar of bling?

Scooped-out hells hidden in shells.

Tear-streaked faces in damp-ridden places.

Young hopes eaten, young chances beaten,

young dreams weakened and wasted.

Consumerism.

Self-regulation is an aberration

to those who pine for costly wine

and smelly cheese and the need to please

the purveyors of lies, ignoring the cries

that fall from the mouths that don’t taste food

but know of the pains of birth in a land

that falls prey to a predatory man

who flogs baubles and beans with no magic it seems

but that which is force-fed whilst the hungered lie dead.

Consumerism.

Antán Ó Dála an Rí

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