Stuff.

With oodles of stuff greasing our palms

The charcoal children across the pond look on enviously.

Candle holders, glitter bralets, pasty camera lenses

Stuff pours from the crevices of the West.

I sit at my computer, bug-eyed in front of Primark hauls

Poundland hauls, bikini hauls

This is what I bought, this is how it looks

But all this stuff is made by dirt-ridden, miniature fingers

In dingy factories, sordid and dim-lit.

Half the world is overflowing with stuff

While the other half is dying.

And yet I’ll continue to sit here watching people unwrap packages, boxes, food parcels and useless objects ’til the cows come home. Purchases which make no sense, purchases which are unnecessary and make me wonder why we yearn for SO. MUCH. STUFF. Is it just our generation? Are we just a product of capitalism? The puppets in its sour show? Online shopping makes us green with envy and purple with desire. Wallets wide open, money flaunted and egos stroked. Yet, across the pond there are people dying of starvation,  crippled by wars and dictatorships. These are people who struggle to find clean water and a decent meal, who would give anything to be fighting the crowds in Primark instead of fighting to survive, ducking from bombs, dodging injustice, and squirming at the corruption which lies so blatantly within their lands. These are the same people who are responsible for crafting the products we pay through the nose for, and yet barely a penny reaches them. We show the world what we’ve bought and how much we’ve paid, failing to acknowledge how we came to acquire it and who was instructed to make it. It’s disgusting and mind-numbing when you finally realise how messed up everything is.