PC Musical Chairs
Everyone gets a seat; no one gets left out. The desire to equalize is starting to numb us out. Blunting individuals, looking far too wide beyond the need to understand that every single mind must know its own reflection not one that has been supplied. With over regulation we've nothing to decide. Without the risk of failure, we've nothing to achieve. But when failures is the basis on which a brand new moral theme is set from past conceptions of an old morality, how far does doctrination make it seem like a repeat? Invisible consensus. Value added facts. Standards shift without warning. Something starts to crack. Hear it on radio. See it on a screen. Read it in a paper. They tell me what it means, in terms of having heard it somewhere else before, but the media self-appointed, are laying down new laws to give us more illusions, and this one like disease, has spread so well we find it hard to disbelieve. Political Correctness? Check the words out one by one. After years of media politics the first one is no fun. The "correctness" reeks of classrooms, being taught to toe the line. So don't tell me it is natural, or previously in our minds. Anyone with a conscience knows what is right or wrong. They are pushing what cannot be bought: a reason to belong. PC is just a label, not a statement of ID. Not a passport to be someone of some higher quality. When something says it for us and repeats it enough times, we believe we hear a chorus of other people's minds. Then we all become self-conscious and lose the basic need of expressing our opinions; it is the root of being free. It's only by discussion of a difference that is known. Learning by discerning who we meet and where we go. No one sets morality, what you are is all your own. PC obscures reality. What you reap is what you sow.

Next Big Thing
"Tremendous! Fab!" the critics cried, as unpopular culture was opened wide to show the world what wasn't hidden, but up until then had been forbidden. With more open eyes than open minds, the critics searched intent to find the latest act on the borderline between being coarse and showing fine. An image brought to public view that spurned the many to proclaim the few yet processes such that any threat was shown to be simple to forget. And for that falsehood the people flocked to be seen to be relishing what they'd mocked. Safe now the threat was public domain. All the old rebellion was shown to be safe, radical chic for the strong gone weak. Handed on a plate what they were too scared to seek. Dressed in non-conformity the people took the hand that seemed to promise freedom, but they couldn't understand that through the hands of the media and all the ways they are feeding it the content becomes less, not more. Like getting the end result without knowing the score. Music has been raped and shed of all its power by the images fed. Beguiled by smiles presumed to be scorns. They bought the product and the cult was formed. Original music is always born but the way it's produced can make it look deformed. Pity for the rebel who fought so strong to be put in the position where he didn't belong but hoped beyond the vision he'd always had that some kind of good could emerge from the bad.

Can't Be Bothered
Queuing up for leaflets 'How to Get Ahead.' Well, one man grumbles next to me, "That's the one I never read, but no one tells me what I need so it doesn't really bother me." Outside someone sweeps the road, I ask, "Is it good pay?" "Throw that leaflet in the bin and ask some other day. I do my job to make ends meet. Reasons, they don't bother me." In the lineup by the sign that says, 'Wait here until it comes', everyone is standing in the rain, doing mental sums. The fare has just gone up again, so the weather doesn't bother them. The bus is late again. The driver smiles, he knows that the people who complain at him will thank him when they go. "Well I get paid, and they pay me. So it doesn't really bother me." A kid walks down the pavement kicking stones and cans. His mother slaps him harder to make him understand. "You can try and impress your friends, but it doesn't really bother them." And his friends are laughing loudly, but they're feeling just like him. There's always someone bigger who tells you, "You can't win." So they hang around in groups of ten, pretending nothing bothers them. A man lumped in the corner was talking A to Z about where he'd been and what he'd done and why all his friend were dead. "I know I drink too much," said he, "but now it doesn't bother me." Nothing bothered anyone, so I wondered, "Who am I to be the only person to ever wonder why?" And someone said I was in the way. "Does it bother you?" "No, it's okay."

2000 and One
Selling by number. Hi-tech illusion. Look to a future, and keep it clean. 2000 and One. End of the century. Figuring out the advertising schemes for toilet machinery, paper dispensers, kitchen appliances, razor blades, serial comics without the humor. Buy now, pay later. Pre-arranged. 2000 years since whatever the panic was all about. Turn on the TV to see the devout asking for money so they can help you out. It's almost as if we can stand and watch until the magic number lets us off somehow. We imagine a new beginning. Getting fatter after all the thinning. Losing so much, then suddenly winning. Meanwhile obscuring the chaos we live in with fast rate technology, plastic diversions. Wiping our conscience on numerical versions of a future conceived, too easily believed via numb repetition in a culture of ease and convenience trash. We're so easy to please. Is nobody asking for more than this? Don't wait too long, it won't always exist. 2000 and One.

Panic in the Supermarket
She got a basket; she got to fill it. Picking up a can of beans, imagining herself in a movie scene. A random fluctuation, background music hesitation, tape chewed up! It's panic station, consumerist disintegration. I won't buy this cause I don't need it! I won't buy this! I cannot afford it! I can't stay in! But where is the exit? Wide awake, it's automatic panic in the supermarket. She got a ticket, but she can't use it. Offer ends in twenty minutes, no ID and needs to prove it. Check-out full of cheque-card carriers. Barges through the human barrier, "Let me through I'm in a hurry." Store detectives in a flurry, "Don't let her out! She hasn't bought it! Don't let her shout! Just keep her quiet!" What happens now? The price is riot! Someone pulls an automatic panic in the supermarket. She got a bullet with no name on it. It was generic. It hit her wallet. Got compensation, a month of credit, and someone fixed the tape machine to keep the shoppers in a dream. No one recalled the shooting thing until they put it in a magazine. "You must buy this! You won't believe it! You can't resist!" is how they feed it. "Just one more thing; top of your basket." Impulse buy on automatic panic in the supermarket.

"Can't Complain"
In a state of mutual desperation we declared our level of alienation. Any silent crowded situation it felt so full of concentration. Never looking in that direction. Sat on the end of a private section of wood, the waiting room conversation still waiting to break the speculation. And the same thing's happening again: people taking their solitude out of the rain and into their houses to the same refrain of, "Have a nice day, dear?" "Can't complain." Cause the dream of anything ever changing remains a nightmare of really starting what you feel. So you carry on waiting for someone else to say they understand but it will always go as someone else has planned, the capitulating silence gives them the upper hand. There's always someone louder who will tell you want to do. There's always some instructions at the front-end of the queue. And in this mass of silence there's more than just a few who would love to burst out laughing cause they've thought of something new. But only if they knew for sure they're not the only one, cause so often the reaction is as if you'd fired a gun. The shattering of silence is so often seen as violence. Just goes to show that fear of altered circumstance is rife. A fear imposed by those who say that rituals in life are needed to sustain the draining off of inspiration, so no on ever dare complain about their situation. Imagine what the change could be if what was thought so constantly was said, not kept locked up inside our heads. Too many people thinking, "No one thinks like this. What if no one else agrees? It is too much of a risk." A nod and half a glance contain the contents of a super-brain for all we know, or he could be insane, but its hard to tell cause he looks the same, and anyway, he didn't say his name, not that anyone dared to ask. All of us playing the waiting game in a state of mutual desperation. No use saying, 'Oh, I can't complain' if you want to change a situation. Imagine what the change could be if what was thought so constantly was said, not kept locked up inside our heads.

Faster
Fast technology made a problem and advertised its own solution. Buy the latest, speed it all up. Drive off into Science Fiction. Longing for a new sensation, found one at the intersection. Adverts smiling for attention, missing the turning-blew the engine. Bought a new one, fuelled for process. Link roads linking speed to progress. Got there faster, missed the views. Lost the meaning, blew a fuse. Bought a new one different shade of image on the screen displayed in carparks at the service station. Home from home disorientation. Crossed the point of no admission. Commuter terminal collapse. Someone pull the plug on this one before the wire runs out and snaps. Get a spare one! It's too late! Half a headline in the paper. Someone drove too fast to mention. Here comes another edge to go over. Up to date but running on empty. Knew the risk, forgot to check. Heard, forgotten, and repeated. Social scrap-yard, full of wrecks. Here's a new promotion tactic: unplug that and plug in this one. He who hesitates is dated. Make the most of what we make it. Repeat, consume and undervalue to the tune of double bluff. You say you don't need it, but you cannot get enough.

Phone in Sick
Queuing up for jobs that we don't and demean us. Want to be a shop assistant? Lavatory cleaner? Spent a bomb on uniforms to justify low wages. Qualify by turning up and having smiley faces. And by the way, your appearance isn't what we call supportive. You put your image up for sale the corporation bought it. Just do what we tell you to and keep your job forever, or at least until we sack you, cause computers do it better. Woke up with a job one day, and I didn't want to work no more. Get a life before it is too late: phone is sick of it all. When the only thing that jobs entail is endless repetition--stacking up and pulling down, and making no decisions-then it is time to re-evaluate your actual position. How far does an opportunity become a prison? All our creativity is waiting to be used. If it's not what you're working with, find better things to do. Work and play should be combined together, make it fun. Don't waste your life regretting it, cause it is the only one.

Refugees Go West
It's all-channel mindset in Western World style, between TV and work we all roam. While mad politicians cause wars and divisions in places a long way from home. Political, power-crazy, Generals on hills are bombing the people they know and making demands, claming rights over land, until their ain't nowhere safe left to go. "This is religion and so is this too, and one of them, therefore, is wrong." It is the same old excuse to support fascist views: "You may live here, but you don't belong." Family gathered to see what was left on the borders of what was once home. The country next door said, "You're welcome, I'm sure, but the law says you'll soon have to go." The phrase "ethnic cleansing" is dressing in words: racist, oppression, and death. When the last refugees have come out of the east, how far will they have to go west? The refugee's story gets lift in the cold as we turn off the TV and go. Easy to ignore until it is at your front door, then it is time to "stay" and not "go."

Backlash
They're shifting the blame for the problems away from the people who made them. Pointing the figures and fingers at those who have already found the solutions. The squatters who took themselves in, reducing the homeless and using the homes. The travelers who said 'goodbye' to it all, and 'hello' to anyone else on that road. The kids are ramraiding their boredom, reproducing themselves on TV, with no aims or future before them. The future got faster to see. "They" are the headline writers. "They" are the faces on screens. "They" are the seekers of status. "They" are the words in a speech. Prepared for the total rejection of all that they say they can do. After the strikes and the backlash the people will want something new. But instead of reversing the process and listening out for ideas, they'll turn the attention on lifestyles, untouched by their stirring up fear. And divert the anger and protest away from their actions-in-actions, fictions, denial, contradictions, image-forming, status-building, power-games, names with titles, mind-games; diverting the blame by diverting the problem. "Yes, but now look at THIS situation." Here we all go attacking the minority. Same old thing, but a different label. Pretty soon we'll all be in one or another, dividing the majority is keeping them stable. It's basically a case of replacing the reality of people living out their own variety with misinformation about the state of the nation, being down not to the Government, but a lack of morality. The only morality they understand is a belief in control of the status quo. Anyone succeeding in escaping these things becomes a target when the fuses blow. Me, I've never squatted nor lived on site, but I've seen enough to know what's right. I've watched both sides of this lifestyle fence, and it's more than politics, it's common sense. Nobody does what they don't want to. The state exists to promote itself. Given alternatives of what you could do, you wouldn't need the sate, and nor would anybody else!

Friends
I've got friends who are there to the end. Sharing past experience, rejecting all the trends. Seeing through the everyday and leading their own lives. Creating tunes and phrases that help us all survive. I've got friends who chose to settle down, mortgages and babies, getting married, saving Pounds. So when I get to tell you these friends are all the same, you start to get the picture - the shock is in the change. Growing older separates experience from 'now.' What once was one big family is caught up in a row. Based on what we used to be, divisions causing stress. Looked upon subjectively, it all seems such a mess. Sat in stupid corners thinking we're all alone. Not counting friends who went the way we never used to go. While they're sat in the same corners feeling more or less the same. How many rules were broken to lead up to this game? How much freedom do we need before we give me of it away? Opinions need to loosen up if we really want some change. If every boundary we create excludes more than it retains, then old friends are excluded, and you have to think again.

Skin
Growing skin last washed forgotten, when it would be getting rotten but for the rain. Sold times zero to shut out the refrain, "How come we never got to see you again?" Not so much trapped as preferring to hide. Don't open the door unless you're going outside. Living on nothing getting too expensive. Turned it inside out and lost the friendship. With a mood of defiance and not wanting it, becoming reliant on the fact it exists. Searching for something better that this? Throw out the pieces that never would fit. And throw out the jig…saw you coming for miles. Emptied the bin with a, picked up the phone with a, had a few words with a, wrote it all down with a smile. And time stood still like good times do, while bad times hovered in the recent past. Talking them over lets you know you can choose between cutting them dead or letting them last. And the choosing is the using of your own self-esteem. Did you like it as it was? Or has it never really been? Some people want it dirty and others like I clean, denying there's an area that's lying in-between. Watching the blind leading the blind gives you the time to use your mind. Plenty of skin to grown back again, plenty of room outside the one you're in.