Beauty

Space, crowded, I can not move anywhere
without someone breathing down my neck,
there are fourteen to a room in the block I live in,
that's quite normal really, I know a guy though
who shares with twenty five because he lost his job
and was forced into a cheaper lifestyle.

Even here where I write, there are people everywhere,
this little patch of grass - I paid a week's wages
just to sit here so I could write in relative peace.

I'm wondering now if it was worth it,
worth starving myself on flour and water cakes
until I get money again to pay for some better gruel.

You don't get to see much of earth anymore,
we destroyed that long ago, oh there are many deserts
you can go to though, blasted patches of land,
but beware, if you go there you might
never get out again alive - toxic beauty.

Work, well what can I say about it,
all day long I stand in a line and move
a piece of metal from one shelf to another.

Intriguing job - not, the robots used to do it
but now they're in space working with the rich people,
the likes of me, we have to work like this,
we're not allowed to do nothing, it's against the law.

There's some rest in sleep, but most of the time
I just dream of my job - sometimes though
there are dreams of beauty: flowing fields of flowers
I have seen on the tv screens here in stolen moments,
but dreaming like that kills me, for when I wake up
I scream in horror at being alive here and now.

Those tv screens, they just torment us, showing us how
good we are as a race, how many planets we have
terraformed or ruined while we have to stay here
'cos we're the masses, they say, I say I am an individual.

But no one ever listens, I don't even know why I write,
this paper will be taken from me as soon as I leave here,
recycled for the next fool to come and vent.
I'd try and sneak it, but they'd catch me
and I don't fancy dying today, anyway, I just thought
I'd send a message through time to you,
did you get it? I wonder if you did,
I think not, because I'm still here doing thi...