The System Is Broken
Wake up, cried the child
Mum and Dad are like zombies
Staring blankly at their screens
Why won’t they play with me?
Always claiming they’re too busy
Always huffing and sighing
They don’t hear my crying
All I want is connection
But all I feel is rejection
They spend their days making money
Tell me, “we can go out when it’s sunny”
But those days roll around
And they’re too tired, I’ve found
So instead I sit and play
And I pray that things will change
As I slowly build walls around my heart
Wake up, cried the sister
I’ve got this tightness in my chest
I can’t sleep, I’m depressed
Why does no one understand me?
I think I’ve got anxiety
And no wonder, because we can’t see
Touch, hear, taste anything real anymore
Everything is supersized, supersonic
Deepfake, photoshop
I’m bombarded with new ways
Of how I should change
Botox, lip fillers and new boobs
This is how to improve
But I feel doomed
Why don’t they want me, to just be me?
Wake up, cried the brother
I don’t know who I am
The media tells me I’m toxic
Am I really that sick?
I’m told I’m inherently twisted
Before I’ve had a chance to get my grip
I didn’t have anyone to guide me
Dad was always busy
So I turned to the internet
Like any normal person
And what I found was awesome
Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson
Strong and wise men, voices of reason
They teach me that I should treat women as property
That women should call me, “your majesty”
I use these men as my guides, my idols
Because where else am I supposed to turn to?
Wake up, cried the father
Time is slipping through my fingers
I love my children,
But do I even know them?
I earn the money, I win the bread
But I’m going to end up dead
Before I get the chance
To belly laugh, or to dance
To enjoy the fruits of my labour
Or the fruits of my loins
When did things start to shift?
Or more, when did things all turn to shit?
My kids just grunt and nod
Think I’m an old sod
With nothing to say
And when I lay next to my wife at night
She turns the other way
They say money doesn’t buy happiness
Except that, they kind of do?
I feel I’ve been led astray…
Wake up, cried the mother
Time to wake the kids, start the morning
But I’m tired
I’m tired of cooking and cleaning,
Of dusting and preening
Of loads of washing
Of the mental load
My brain is weighed with lists and lists
To do’s, to buys, “hey mum, where’s this?”
I don’t have time to sit back
To think, what do I want?
There’s no time, for personal growth
To grow gardens, repair clothes
There’s no time to read, or even think
What does the world outside my bubble need?
There’s no space to care about life beyond my family
I feel trapped between four walls
Not a second for reprieve
They say women can have it all
But is this all, that there is?
Wake up, cried the Grandmother
I can see it all now
I can see how we’ve just bowed
Bent over to our masters
And let these disasters unfold
We closed our eyes
When the kids in Africa cried
Not mourning for their lives
We turned our cheek
When the politicians would speak
Of economic growth, GDP
Things that don’t measure happiness
But we did not see, the duplicity
We didn’t think anything wrong
When they sprayed crops, all day long
Pesticides and herbcides
No we did not try
To change things
As the forests lost their trees
And the animals were forced to flee
It was all in the name of advancement, and prosperity
I can see it all now
How we treat the cows, the sheep, even the baby chicks
How we did not think a’miss
When our children returned from school
After following all the rules
Void of imagination, creativity
Of their individual eccentricities
How we did not take issue
With homelessness or inequality
“If you just work hard, pay the bills
We’ll look after you
Don’t worry about the others, it’s their own fault”
Just continue
To be a cog in the wheel
In the rat race that makes us lie and steal
That makes us look the other way
So that we can provide for our family another day
I can see it all now
And I feel sick to my core
Wake up, cried the grandfather
How I wish I was awake before
God damn that capitalism
The greatest hoodwink of them all
It’s going to make us free, they said
But in the end, it made us fall
Fall, deep into depression
Deep into recession
Deep into a place where my granddaughter can’t breathe anymore
Yes, the system was effective
It pulled many out of poverty
But we did not see the smoke screen
We did not think to scream aloud
When they stood up proud
Told us our tax payer dollars would be spent on war
Instead of hospitals, disability care,
Or the things they swore
they would
Eat the rich, the young ones cry
But we just sigh
We return to our screens
Hanging out for that dopamine
We don’t spurn the rich, we revere them
We treat them like Gods, their money is our religion
Billionaires are our deities, celebrities, the almighty
And we just assume
That our purpose here is to consume
What else are we good for?
If not to fill the void of “more”
Oh yes, the system was effective
At drawing lines, building fences
And it made us so angry, so tense
We did not realise the consequence
Of this nonsense called wealth
That we were sacrificing our health
That this life of ease
Was really creating disease
That we were losing our community
Our sense of unity
We didn’t realise that what we were really building
Was walls around our hearts
The system was effective
At making us numb
And I feel dumb for not seeing it before
For not trying to save my family
Before the simple life becomes folklore