Ignominiously dismissed after thirty long years
He could start a new life, or just drown in cold beers.
He was sitting at a bar with a pint of cold Bass
When suddenly he smiled and put down his glass.
The thought of injustice hit him hard when it struck
He stood up and walked out with no backward look.

He took up his pen and he scribbled long and hard
He wrote all his grievances in a book of white card
Then he put it away at the back of a drawer
And thought, that’s the past, I’m not there anymore.

He wrote about losses, especially job losses
Manipulative leaders and corruptible bosses
And realised quite soon he was still in the past
Though his real desire was a fresh start at last
But he found out quite soon that wasn’t the plan
Drive the man from his life…
but not the life from the man.

Yet what has amazed him over these years
Is how many others seem to share his same fears
Old people treated with such wicked disdain
Parasites of the state is a frequent refrain
Young people shout but don’t understand
As they jump to the tune of some motley band.

And the young themselves who cannot find work
Not a socialist crowd, very few a young Turk.
They haven’t the heart like we had in the past
Nor that striding for right, not one iconoclast.
But they jump on the bandwagon shouting the odds
They’ll age just like us, the daft silly sods.

©Joe Wilson – A social conscience…2016