SOLILOQUY FOR THE OLD CREW

Southwesterly mix of cyclic downturns,  

how they play on minds when the kids have left

citing mental health. Customary ways

of speaking scrape a dry channel, old

legacies, how it all became stagnant

beyond decades of self-expanding growth.

It’s said the global scale, commodity

fetishes, relocated factory floors

of low-wage economies, the chasm

of industry’s late-made off-setting gains

as contrary life, speeding but slowing,

growing but compressed, bends down on scabbed knees.

And time is a speculative venture,

promises re-cast loose between lovers,

bursting bubbles, catalogues of crashes,

jobless recoveries, grand recessions.

The central banks of fauna have pulled up

the blankets, the gaze anaemic and all

abdicated duties to no avail.

They’re laying the stakes is what they’ll all say,

advising caution, tactics, micro-trends

of late capitalism, post-Fordism,

cognitive dissonance, a new Third Way.

They are earnest on the face of it, quick –

draw attention – a sketch of parables

and open-ended audits of footnotes

wafting our way, or out, with swell voices

booming at the lost, the busted, silenced.

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MW Bewick lives in Essex, England, and is the co-founder of Dunlin Press. Recent collections include The Zircon Ferries (Beir Bua Press) and The End of Music (Black Light Engine Room). He works as a journalist and editor and from time to time as a creative writing lecturer. He occasionally makes music and mostly wears black.