Hallucinated Reality 4: Disposability – Andrew Barham

What happens
When
Our
Hallucinated Reality
Becomes
A nightmare
We are unable
To awaken from?

Everything
Manufactured
Off-shore these days …

Cheap
Worthless
Chinese junk

But labour costs
Are so much lower
And everyone
Looks for
The cheapest price
Even if you're willing to pay more
For better quality
There's no guarantee
You'll get it

IKEA …
Flat pack
Disposable
"Use it once
"And throw it away!"
Furniture

No more
Hand-me-down heirlooms
Good for a hundred years
Or more
Of hard use –

Never buy new!
Unless you really have to,
The surest way
To undermine
The collective consumer culture
Before it overwhelms us
And covers us all
With our refuse.

But
We've locked ourselves in
To the nightmare
Of Disposability

Our economy
An economy
Of sale
Requiring unbounded growth
In a finite world

But,
We keep pushing back
The boundaries
Towards
The Lim Soup
Of expansive potential
Gradually
At first
Accelerating
Exponentially
Towards
The final collapse
Of everything
We've built.

Andrew Barham

This is part of a series of "Hallucinated Reality" poems in which the title is actually imbedded within the poem. Thus, these poems are titled, but the title does not appear at the top, but somewhere within the poem.