Caring is ‘a lifestyle choice’, or so I’m being told;
as though we can choose if we grow sick or old
or when our hearts and minds give out
so that the steady ground beneath us falls away;
as if we can say, in advance of the event:
If such and such a trouble should occur,
here are the people whom the State should approach;
surely, one of them will choose to care.

Is then disability also a ‘choice’
in the busy, brash, I’m-Alright-Jack,
consumerist parlance of the day?
Pray silence, happy shoppers, for a buzz-word
from our sponsors who now bring you,
di-rect from the good ol’ US of A,
that fine nation of Walmarts and malls,
the privatisation of healthcare,

gentrification, the dispossession of the urban poor;
hate crime directed against those