L-I-F-E, Management Issues

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Today's poem first appeared on the blog in 2014.

Isuspect Covid-19 s more of a struggle for people living  in big cities than in rural areas, especially for those of us who live alone?

Perhaps it is because I am growing old, but I take far less pleasure from living in London than I used to.  Even so, my life is here.  While I take much pleasure in its wealth of leisure facilities and history as and when I can, I remain acutely aware that I am passively complicit in this mad world of ours going about an everyday business that leaves much to be desired...

London, like so many cities and suburbs is overcrowded and the air quality leaves as much to be desired as the neighbourliness and sense of community that once existed, and now has become yet another endangered species wherever it remains, as it does, even in certain pockets of modern society. (West can learn much from East in this respect.

I suspect we all run a familiar gamut (to one degree or another) in cities and large towns across the world. In recent years, fake news and social media make a significant contribution to personal anxieties and a sense sometimes of being on a treadmill 

Whatever, all we can do is take each day as it comes, nurture a positive-thinking mindset, and make the best of what life offers rather than whinge about the worst ...

L-I-F-E, MANAGEMENT ISSUES

Manic streets, paved with eggshells

(Oh, so politically correct...)

Big Issue drumming up passing glances

(Equal Ops prime suspect.)

Beggar and dog at the supermarket

(On the outside, looking in…)

Tailbacks on the home run, a nightmare

(No respect for Car is King.)

Blind man making his own way home

(Small change for a pickpocket...)

Arthritic bag lady taking up a park bench

(Move along, security alert!)

Hey, I bet that one’s a terrorist, see?

(Looks foreign to me...)

Thin is sexy or so we’re asked to believe

(Gorging on glossy magazines...) 

School kid mugged for a smart phone

(Better not to get involved...)

Teenage lovers sharing well-used needles

(What about HIV-AIDS?)

Shoplifters killing off the High Street

(Business as usual...)

.

Copyright R. N. Taber 2007; 2020

[Note: An earlier version of the poem appears in Accomplices to Illusion by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2007. For any overseas readers, who may not know, The Big Issue is a newspaper sold on the streets of the UK and other countries by homeless people; it gives them a regular income, and more importantly helps restore their self-confidence while preserving their self-respect: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Issue ]