You don’t need two nations for a brain drain to occur, I’ll tell you that.
I’ve been sitting here all morning and my eyes have seen nothing more than my own disappointment.
These people could be living in British Japan, I tell you
And they’d be just as ‘third world’ the whole day through.
It pains me to have to be around them and so I wonder;
I’m scared shitless that I’ve made the wrong decision!
Scared into silence, though my mind is buzzing itself into an indistinguishable murmur.
I have a job right now, you see.
I keep hoping it’s a nightmare but no that’s a real tree.
They pay as well as the others had offered to, they give me better and more work,
And i’m as happy as I deserve to be,
But the people around me are lowly.
If we shared a language or a skill or a certain extent of intellect,
I could have looked past their dire lack of beauty or humour.
But they have nothing to offer and I’m sitting here like a wasted tide-puller before Armstrong happened.
I do enjoy being in the spotlight; those furtive glances I intercept as the beholder turns rosy red;
But that attention is only welcome when I’m being looked at by someone I’d like to look at.
If it was unconditional attention we wanted we wouldn’t have the balls to condemn rape, now would we?
Save me from this inferno of dying vocabularies and stilted thought processes,
Take me far away from these men and women who can’t earn themselves money,
And have no ambition and beat their women and waste their lives.
I’m so afraid that if I work here any longer I’ll start to like them.
It’ll be just a smile at first, but then I’ll get used to it,
That laughter that’s only ever responsive, that talk they have
That I start off interested to hear but groan as it turns to shit.
What if they rub off on me and I emerge mediocre,
Sigh, is this what it’s like to be poor?