Hello! What have we here? A young lady. To what do I owe this pleasant surprise, my pretty one? How may I be at your service, this dark and wintry night? Oh! I see! You wish me to look into the future, your future. After GCSE, A-Levels, University, after your first badly paid job in advertising. OK my pretty, just cross my palm with plastic and I’ll see what I can do. Wait! The fog is lifting!

I see
Oriental paper globes
Hanging like decomposing cocoons
While exotic candles overload
The musty air with their stale perfumes
And I see
Lentils, beans, seaweed and rice
In jars on the windowsill
And it ain’t hardly enough to feed the mice
Running behind the lines of allergy pills.

All these things will come to pass
When heroes of the middle class
Face up to their responsibilities.

I see
An Indian fertility God -
He’s got thirty seven limbs to spare -
And tasteless tie-dyed tablecloths,
That double up as evening wear,
And I see
Naked bodies twist and turn
On the futon of dreams fulfilled
But their three-year-old kid seems unconcerned -
He’d rather swallow all those allergy pills.

All these things will come to pass
When heroes of the middle class
Face up to their responsibilities.

I see
Unspeakable vulgarity,
Institutionalised mediocrity,
Infinite tragedy.
Rise up little souls, join the doomed army,
Fight the good fight, wage the unwinnable war:
Elegance against ignorance,
Difference against indifference,
Wit against shit!

“All my words fly up to heaven,
My thoughts remain below.
Words said without feeling
Never to heaven go,
Never to heaven go,
Never to heaven go,
Never to heaven go.”

All these things will come to pass
When heroes of the middle-class
Face up, repent, and pay the price
For accidentally creating life -
An oversight for which they must atone
And sacrifice their own.