Voices in a Marketplace

'Buy your shirts and shoes!'

The line of the hedgerow is clear:
we stand in the road
and cannot see the fields to either side.
Just as life should be.

'Buy your giant game machines
and candy-coloured "apps!"'

We've walked the road to Wigan pier,
seen the miners soak their lungs in black water,
the old people wither and die in guest homes
like the potted plants and grapevine wallpaper.

But we have an internet now,
with thousands of opinion polls
and squillions of opinions to fuel them.

We have so much information
that only one question is never asked:
why does anyone deserve this much deference?
Or, to put it in another way:
why the fuck does your opinion matter?

'Let's buy our shirts and shoes!'

'Let's buy our giant game machines
and candy-coloured "apps!"'

So we,
too,
even we Brits,
can be Yankees.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: "The road to Wigan pier" is a reference to the book of the same name by George Orwell.