Sing While the Roof Caves In
An Operatic Catalogue of Contemporary Calamities
Written by W. S. Gilbot
Music by Arthur Sulliwan
Presented by The Royal Algorithmic Light Opera Company
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I am the very model of a modern day society,
With fees and charges levied with remarkable variety;
Bread and milk are leased to you on monthly billed facilities,
And ‘freemium’ means ‘pay us more’ for all its capabilities.
The upgrades cost a fortune and they offer only skimminess,
The goods are built to crumble with a most artistic flimsiness,
And tipping’s now expected for the most absurd activities,
Refuse and you’ll be shamed for your deficient sensitivities.
On social feeds the dancers spin in endless loops of video,
While influencers peddle things they think that you need-io;
Skibidi bruh slay bussin sigma no-cap flexodices,
Inflation swells like opera queens in over-tightened bodices.
The climate’s in a muddle and the seasons swap identities,
Snow in summer, blooms in frost, and storms change their priorities;
Private wealth grows fatter while the poorest face austerities,
And charity’s a website where you post your own disparities.
The doctors are in short supply, the nurses getting few and far,
The waiting lists are longer than the queues for some new gadget are;
The AI medic greets you with a most engaging backlit grin,
And offers ‘Wellness Premium’ before it lets your symptoms in.
Click-by-click confessions sold for coupon or for trinkety,
While cookie prompts request consent with brashitude and winkety;
In politicking bubble-lands, each side insists it’s blameless-er,
While shouting past each other makes the shouting only shameless-er.
Speech-police correct words, lest offence should cause calamities,
While cancel-cannons fire at foes for long-forgotten vanities;
The mega-merchants merge until the marketplace is one-ified,
And health-plan clerks play pass-the-form until your hope is mummified.
The oceans teem with micro-specks from bottles once so plasticky,
While theorists of curious bent proclaim their plots dramatically,
Vloggers beg you smash the like before truth dares to clarify,
Apps enshittify it all in a race to monetise-ify.
The shelves are purged of volumes that the moralists find bannable,
While luminescent overflux leaves all the stars unscannable;
Banquets are so mountainous they’re borderline oppressity,
And work from home in sweatpants is the newest indispensity.
The workers plead for mental days to soothe strained cerebellity,
While labour’s ranks are vanishing with startling rapidellity;
The headlines born of algorithms spread with great exaggerance,
While red and blue are waging wars of fact-and-fiction splatterance.
The plague’s pronounced a parlour-myth by cynics in the scholar’s stead,
While ballots are recounted at the whim of what the podcast said;
The statesmen spin their fables with a most unblushing clarity,
And fact is but a costume in the masquerade of verity.
The sponsors stamp their logos on the air we breathe and water drink,
While privacy’s a sinking ship and we the crew that dare not think;
The steering wheel is yours to turn (it’s granted as a courtesy),
But brakes are on a pay-per-stop to guarantee security.
Ere breath is drawn upon the page, a pop-up makes a grasping plea,
Its ‘X’ obscured with artful guile and pixel-sized opacity;
The app just-opened begs you rate its unexamined quality,
Each recipe’s concealed beneath a tome of vast verbosity.
In five short ticks you’ll skip this ad (a mercy most magnanimous),
Though first they’ll make you watch a bit that’s vexingly volume-inous;
‘Physicians Hate This Simple Cure Discovered by a Royal Duke!’
You view and find the ‘cure’ is but a most untested quackish fluke.
The Christmas sales commence before the leaves have left the sycamore,
With plastic snow and jingles that you’ve heard a hundred times before;
The counter-clerk solicits you to yield your coin to chari-tay,
You scurry, flurry, worry loose your final screw of sani-tay.
Yet though the age is mad, my friends, it’s marvellous for rhyming verse,
For madness is the poet’s feast and modern life’s a full-course curse,
So pile the lies and lunacy as high as human folly goes —
We’ll blast it in a chorus line until the whole caboodle blows!
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