CULTURE VULTURE 

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Listening to a poet
breathing at the festival
Is like leaning against a wall
In 1950’s Britain
to welcome young black men 
arriving in suits and ties
other suitable disguise

I often stand alone
in fields watching
natural disorder as once
I walked Westminster Bridge
where culture had a dotted line
marked ‘cut’ as in old movies
until the falcon arrives

see culture, feel culture
bleed culture now on your
overpriced vinyl records
on your Jamaican boxcart
in your lands of neutrality
where honest people
forget how to fight

my first notions
of peer pressure
occurred standing in a
grey school playground
feeling poor with only one
channel on the television
and there was no Popeye

but the hypocrites
absorb everything
without taste or tact
untruth, relevance or fact
their cyclops eye is 
trained upon confusion
ponders not the human solution

seven verses, seven lies
the cattle just got fatter
as despots, ingrates
and tyrants assume control
vindicate their atrocity
that people still starve
that children still suffer

I cannot watch the news
with its sing-song rhythm
cannot sleep content
in a red brick house
as just another culture vulture
who feeds on scraps
of misery or joy

©edenbraytoday30.07.2025