Two-Car Family
We grew up on streets
lined with driveways and trees.
Quiet roads, pre-Bulger.
Often two cars per household.
Dad’s for work and family visits.
Mum’s little run-a-round
for the pop to shops to get milk and sliced bread.
Wholemeal, of course.
British. Suburban. Mostly white. Middle class.
Children of parents brought up on Lennon,
Dylan, Jagger, Atlee, Bevan –
Late Boomers advantaged with straps and supports,
sticks and incentives,
the Beveridge report.
Enriching themselves and their own bootlaces
in what would be known as the consensus of hand-outs.
Sometimes they couldn’t go the distance.
And if the explosion of acne weren’t terror enough,
many of us were forced into trial separations,
family counselling sessions,
endgames of bedsits down tight cul-de-sacs,
solicitor’s letters petty on the mat,
saying who would keep Peppers with the mint condition insert,
and the autographed copy of Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours”.
But they still loved us, at least that’s what they said
as they elected a world where degrees are like beans –
industrial, branded, bought from a shelf.
Where average pay is dwarfed by the debts.
Where the printing of money goes on unabated.
Where often they speak in an outraged deep purple
at the merest hint at a dip in their assets.
“I’ve paid into it all my life! I mean, the nerve!”
Some of us vote, but we don’t feel entitled.
We only went to the local comp, after all.
And sometimes we wake in our childhood bedrooms,
or halfway through shifts in coffee shop bars,
or deep in the hustle of endless internships.
Unlistened to. With no bank of mum and dad.
The word “affordable” dead, a corpse in their mouths.
Wondering when was it exactly that they pulled up the ladder.
And when we can’t sleep we stand at the windows,
staring, green-eyed, at the houses beyond.
Watching and hoping for darkening corners,
for a gathering whiplash of deflation and rain.
Weighing our lives and our rage and our anger.
Our stomachs heavy with choked-back spleen.
Waiting for the lights to be turned off, extinguished –
the landing ones left on to make homeowners feel safe.
