Poem

Welcome To The Wastelands

Welcome to the Wastelands...
Leave your morals at the entrance.
Welcome to a world, where every last soul,
Commits sins without repentance.
Where we struggle to string together a sentence,
And slur syllables like an intoxicated snake.
We play the cards God dealt us,
Our own bad habits dictate our fates...

Guzzling crates of cheap cider,
Until we’re crawling curbs like spiders.
Liquor soaked love, and a pocketful of drugs,
Provoke a chorus of ‘Eye of the Tiger.’
Getting fucked on just a fiver...
Can that be justified?
Let’s procrastinate and pontificate
‘Til our dreams just bluster by.

Welcome to the Wastelands...
There’s no need to be afraid,
We’re just a bunch of hopeless layabouts,
Praying we get paid.
Made from our mistakes,
Still, we piss-take and poke fun,
‘Cos if you can’t laugh at your own misfortune,
You’re in for a long stretch, son.

So come and consult with scum,
Who live such humdrum lives,
We’re all in the gutters, and when we look to the stars,
We only see ashtray skies.
Hence, we hide from the outside world,
And exist on a diet of ready-made meals.
It’s like I’m on a road to nowhere, ‘cos doing nowt round here
Is like some kind of religious ordeal.

Welcome to the Wastelands...
Hang your false hope on the door,
Look out for the hearts, which lie shattered like glass,
Scattered on a vomit-stained floor.
Where the poor meet the rich,
And the kids bring up babies,
Where half of the locals are bonkers or crazy,
Or, ‘mentally unstable’
To use the PC term.
Where the grown-ups never grow up,
They just throw up what they’ve learned.
We burn the candles at both ends,
Just existing, what’s the point?
Let’s hope the answer lies at the bottom of a bottle,
Or somewhere rolled up in this joint.

Welcome to the Wastelands...
Where nature’s beauty meets man’s beast,
Where ocean spray meets urban decay,
And hippies burn twigs on the beach.
Round here, the streets ain’t paved with gold,
But gum,
And park benches cluttered by vagrants and bums,
All shooting up junk ‘til they’re comfortably numb,
Their potential and promise, it’s all come undone.

Welcome to the Wastelands...
Here, is where everything ends,
Life can be hard down on this boulevard,
So it helps if you’ve got a few friends.
To guide you through those rough nights,
And have your back in a punch-up or pub fight,
We’re on the cusp of nothingness,
Our ambition has been sucked dry.
And extinguished,
A burnt-out brotherhood of bingers,
That could have had the world at our feet,
But hold a rolled-up note in our fingers.

Welcome to the Wastelands...
Once you’ve arrived, you’ll struggle to leave,
Our lab’s an anti-rehab,
Our addictions the air that we breathe.
Yes, belief has all but disappeared,
But we don’t feel,
So we don’t fear,
All we request is just one more beer,
To help us fuel the fire, mate,
Cheers…

Callum Mitchell
Penzance, Cornwall

Callum Mitchell is a writer and performance poet who indulges in the beauty and ugliness of everyday life in the 21st century. He has had his work published in Pen Pusher and Scryfa and is currently writing his first novel. He lives in Cornwall and is 22 years old.

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