A poem by a disillusioned citizen

As I sit in my cold house

Sticking bubble wrap to my single glaze,

The slap of the letter box like a slap to the face,

Cold as the air, in an unemployed haze.

Each day the horrors of my future lie in suspension

No letters of job offers, hope or acceptance; its beyond comprehension.

Dangerous ground the post man dictates,

My mood, my emotions, my worries, my fate.

Plenty of bills though, they keep rolling in,

Unwanted, unopened and thrown in the bin.

For their demands just cannot be met,

It’s a number of weeks till my house is for let.

Never have I experienced such rejection,

Something is wrong with this country, a malaise; no, an infection.

A glitch in the system, an error of ways,

A hidden tax that wasn’t part of this IMF deal,

The sanity and wellbeing of our citizens they covertly did steal.

For this is the tax with the human cost,

A generation of proud and confident citizens, now lost.

Not to mention our youth who have fled like sheep,

A drain on society, we cannot afford to keep.

This assault on individuals has a ripple effect,

The stigma, the shame and stifling disconnect.

Amongst families and communities that struggle alike,

It spreads and contaminates, a thorn, a spike,

Fear not the illusive, the intangible, and the mythical.

But look closer to home at something more political.

The real terror of this nation lies interior,

A circus of sorts, nothing less than inferior.

A political system that represents façade

The murkiest of places, a filthy regime.

And citizens just cogs in a rancid machine.

One can prod a beast so much, before it starts to roar,

And so I ask for all to not accept this hypocrisy,

Put a stop to this chaos, this maddening insanity.

Kathy O’Hare

Gould Street

Cork