bad things happen every day.

but not to you, so it's okay?

killing's fine if you're in government,

if it's the poor, the disabled, the queer,

while you fill your mate's pockets with our blood.

what is the price of your humanity anyway?

there's concentration camps in america and oh!

here comes right-wing populism.

empty words and empty promises,

playing on emotions to win votes,

to trick people into damning themselves.

history's repeating itself.

history's repeating itself.

don't look away.

there's concentration camps in china and russia and oh!

here comes nationalism.

lily white colonisers drew lines with a ruler

and now lily white faschists build walls on them.

standing on the shoulders of arseholes and having a pissing contest over the edge.

and somehow what side of the wall you were born on

is the difference between freedom and imprisonment.

fear is hatred is fear is hatred.

demonise the people who can't fight back,

so the ones who can don't realise it's you they should be eating.

we did this.

please, we did this.

don't look away.

journalists play at being 'neutral'.

neutrality means sticking to the facts,

not holding up two sides as equal when one of them is lying through their teeth.

i'm sick to mine.

let's debate this tweet

while they pass bills to fuck us all over.

say the right thing, say the right thing,

never mind what you do.

it's a distraction, you know it is.

our oxygen is burning up.

it's being stolen by corporations whose only thought is the next quarter,

who rub shoulders with politicians and rub their palms too.

the prime minister lies.

bollocks johnson tries to slip through scrutiny like an eel but

he's a fish out of water, floundering and gasping.

power-hungry and desperate.

i hope it tastes like cyanide.

i can see you.

have you heard the squawking of parliament birds?

the hooting and roaring,

the giggling and groans,

the clamour of disdain and outrage and discontent.

shut up.

shut up.

it feels like a school playground:

he makes a jab at his clothes,

he calls her aggressive,

there's shouting and yelling and you can't hear what anyone's saying anymore;

somewhere along the way points are scored and alliances form.

he lounges in his seat thinking of other places he could be,

because this is boring,

why should he listen?

my future depends on these people.

so many futures depend on these people.

it's all a game to them.

we are causing extinctions.

there is a crisis on our hands and all we're given is empty promises

and some don't even get that.

my uncle has a degenerative disease.

i'm scared he won't get the benefits he needs to survive.

some murders are legal.

my mum works in the nhs.

i'm scared it's gonna be carved up and handed to corporations.

there will be deaths. some murders are legal.

temperatures and transphobic crimes are rising.

i'm scared to go outside.

the powerful are preying on the vulnerable.

help us.

do you think you can be one of them? do you think they won't come for you?

they're already in your head.

sometimes the fear fills my brain so much i'm wild with it and i ask how can they not see?

and i feel despair because i know that the people in power can see so much they just don't care and my chest is hollow.

if you know the consequences and you do it anyway, it's murder.

my eyes are brittle and my chest burns and i feel this unspeakable cosmic rage bubbling beneath the surface of my skin, there all the time, ready to burst the banks and set fire to the world and i'm terrified because i know that i'm capable of terrible things, and i'm terrified because i want to do terrible things, and i'm terrified because what if i'm the only one who feels it?

that, would be the worst.

and here we are then, generation Z.

last letter of the alphabet,

and doesn't that make sense?

it feels apocalyptic.

it feels like we're all trapped in a burning office building

and we're courting the edge of a window because we can't find the stairs

and we're thinking about the fire burning us and which would hurt less

and we're just two steps away from the leap

we could do it. we could.

history is repeating itself.

please.

please,

we did this.

don't look away.