Martin Place Drudgery

by Ondine Evans

I see the wheels of progress churning away around me,

The crowds are pouring past in their anxiety,

The advertisements spurring them to greater urgency,

To hurry up and make some more of that hard currency.

I move aside to let them push through exigently,

The jostling of bodies in mutual vacancy.

I stop mid-flow to read the words that seem to urge such passion,

And I am strongly struck by their argument and fashion;

Pushing the twin powers of money and position,

Ensuring the crowd's continiung obsession

With capitalism's basic tenet of possession.

And I make myself an internal confession:

I don't really understand it all, this constatnt grind,

This suffocating blanket on the collective mind,

The need to fit in with the Joneses isn't one of mine.

I really just want to run away and try to find

A way to go beyond these self-imposed confines

That drag us all into these dreary daily lines.