The Wretched Mills

Petroleum rivers in their veins
They drink from the drains
Eat from the gutters
A generation shackled to cackling looms
While fog chokes the infants
In weary cradles and languid wombs
And they are told, in no uncertain terms
That God knows every man under the Sun
But 'tis spiteful lunacy
Ye who have never beheld the Sun
Who is to say you are under it

Like the frozen rooftop
Rip's the toes from pigeon's feet
So too the mule's
On desperate hands a-stamping
Weaving fingers 'mongst textiles
O'er this weary clock face
All digits in a circle
All hands in their place
It's been a long walk
On these tattered souls
Just to be slot
Odd cogs even-shaped holes
Grinding down and down
Like a tapeworm in the gut
The shifted of paradigms
Sandstone, and white noise
Let these mainsprings rust

There's lots to be thrown in
But into what Jeremiah's pit
Do we shuffle, starved and sunken?
For as long as it keeps productivity on the rise
They'll do their utmost
To grind down your particle size
Score by score, scar by scar
Seven veils for seven eagles of the ninth
Sold short, the clearance sale, the golden years
All spines are spires now
All blue-shifted and gifted
With their own cubic metre of breathing space
Petroleum rivers in their veins
They drink from the drains, eat from the gutters
A generation shackled to cackling looms
While fog chokes the infants
In weary cradles and languid wombs

All piers a'peering
Appearing all sunlight on walnut
Barrel-chested and salt-invested
Gilded limpets on family trees
Out on a limb but not all at sea
Sombre oil wept from betwixt charcoal lips
Naught but lubricant for concrete lungs
And it'll take more than a golden city's glister
To convince that it's not just glass
And paint and well-placed-mirrors