On the edge of Cardiff,
down by Rover Way,
a road next to the gruesome coast
lives the bag lady.
You can drive past
and see nothing but bags,
big, plastic, bin bags
amongst the abandoned car wrecks
and rubbish, the debris
of society today,
and believe that she is not there.
But she is there, the bag lady.
Sat quietly amongst the bags
reminding us that
there is no such thing as society.
She has moved outwards
from the industrial estate
past the travellers camp,
Further and further away
from human contact.
This is a landscape
of dead memories
of forgotten industry
of a past life.
It is a new road,
the bypass to a future
of a sanitised Cardiff Bay
raped of its history,
where business rules
and the rich live and gloat
in Disneyland apartments.
Heavy lorries rumble along,
sleek limousines sweep past
ignoring her as
she ignores them.
So, the bag lady is
an embarrassment,
a protest from another world,
an unwelcome comment
on Wales today.
New
Man is essentially
a colourful bag of wind
who talks the talk,
dresses like a peacock,
boasts like an jackal,
tweets like a budgie
and never delivers.
New Man moves on
with haste before
anyone can discover
the emptiness within him and
his promises trail,
like dying fireworks,
behind his triumphant progress
New Man promotes himself,
writes the script
so that he talks himself,
without effort, into the role
he has created.
He’s a chameleon who knows
how to network and flourish.
New Man is an illusion
a great conjuring trick
who succeeds
because he knows how
to charm and schmooze
those who choose
who to promote.
New Man does not listen
because that would mean
he would have to understand
other people who are
beyond him and his world -
ordinary, lower people,
who are alien to him.
New Man is sound
without substance
whistling in the wind,
full of virtual reality,
but lacking understanding
of how things get done,
because he never finishes.
New Man is a Christian,
He’s a man of the future,
and it isn’t looking good,
as he lacks a few megabytes
in his virtual environment.
In reality, he is just a
Nowhere man.