Strange thing ambition
We're supposed to have it at the start
The hand that turns the key in the ignition
And cups the future in its palm.
Fame awaits us if we wish
Or wealth or the pleasures of excess
Or charity, or how we look and dress,
Whatever turns us on, our dream of happiness:
A sunlit dawn across an azure sky,
A child of our own, an island in the sun,
Love eternal, orgasms on demand,
A living large enough to impress
Our schoolfriends, and depress the rest.

All lies within but yet beyond our gloat
Along the shore the road curves out of sight
A green light winks at us across the bay
Beckoning; only we have no boat,
Nor map, nor fuel for the terrestrial route.
Though some things come to us, mostly they won't.

Living can no longer bring fruition
Nor death the mythic mead of afterlife.
Rocks awash in the millennial tide
Waste islands isolated each from each
Collective hopes fragmented past repair
We drift, then fall, one by one, of inanition
Nursing  memories of misplaced pride.
It seems then that the prospects aren't so good
The air is sulphured with man-made despair;
Easter's statues stare, but there's no wood,
No forest left, nor anyone to care.