I wrote this one when I was about 20 (I think). I was doing some contracted work during my university holidays and reading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.
It was terrifying how much the world of work and London seemed to resemble Huxley's dystopia.
I was working with a content management or data entry system and it seemed like I was performing pointless tasks endlessly without questioning them to gain the approval of people I didn't really like. I was terrified that this was what the rest of my working life was going to be like.
It's not quite that bad.
The initial italicised bit is a quote from Shakespeare's The Tempest.
Commuters
Oh brave new world!
That has such people in't!
Roofstacks collapse into the distance,
menaced by smog-cloaked office blocks;
a lacklustre landscape slumped on the horizon.
Was it just weeks ago when we watched dawn uncurl,
burn the mist from the morning and paint the sky blue?
Now, the carriage is suffused with mint from the slack-jawed mouth
of some sleep-walking worker, and I am rattled, repeatedly
by small shocks of reality. I have found
some silent dystopia, where interchangeable bodies
snooze and shuffle, and no-one speaks. Strangeness
ripples out from me as we are disgorged from the doors –
Surely – standing stray on the platform –
Surely everyone knows I am not supposed to be here.
That has such people in't!
Roofstacks collapse into the distance,
menaced by smog-cloaked office blocks;
a lacklustre landscape slumped on the horizon.
Was it just weeks ago when we watched dawn uncurl,
burn the mist from the morning and paint the sky blue?
Now, the carriage is suffused with mint from the slack-jawed mouth
of some sleep-walking worker, and I am rattled, repeatedly
by small shocks of reality. I have found
some silent dystopia, where interchangeable bodies
snooze and shuffle, and no-one speaks. Strangeness
ripples out from me as we are disgorged from the doors –
Surely – standing stray on the platform –
Surely everyone knows I am not supposed to be here.
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