Greed

Once heralded the murder capital of Europe
Obesity centre
Time to upset the titles and rewrite the narrative
With gentrification
Not on our watch
Not if Pret A Manger has a say
Forty thousand children living in poverty
The city's hidden secrets are threatening
Its commonwealth prowess
Its cultural status
Downgrade, reframe and you'll see instead
That the kids here will scare you
She can watch them from her window
Pre-pubescent villains running hoodlum doused in boredom
Ghosts of Greed's childhood
She sees her brothers in their eyes
Her parents in their cries
Their teeth are broken glass
Watch them bare their shards and laugh

Avert your eyes, pick up the pace
You'd make no difference anyway
Rather save attention for an H and M spending
After a hard day
Hardly a sin, is it, hardly a sin
Is it?
Is it?
Is it?
Hardly a sin
Is it?

Ties fixed so tight, they'd choke the love in you
Dull the voice in you
Skew the thought as you pay
Eight pound for espresso and croissant
To wash down the anti-depressants
Normalised sedatives for
Nine to five addicts, for apathy criers
Disquiet deniers
Greed knows that hand-to-mouth living lacks
The glamour of the movies
When there's nothing in your fridge
And Instagram pictures of your notebook and coffee
Won't cover your rent
See, once you've got money
There's nothing like it
This round's on me becomes motto of victory
Makes your heart swell with the thrill of success
And forget where you came from
Start afresh, score out the rest
Get your foot on the ladder
My God, you are climbing
Once you get a head for heights
The view from there's sublime

Avert your eyes, pick up the pace
You'd make no difference anyway
Bottle it up
For the sacrament of happy hour
After a hard day
Hardly a sin, is it, hardly a sin
Is it?
Is it?
Is it?
Hardly a sin
Is it?

Squint, just there
And you only see rooftops and not the debris
If you squint, just there
Makes the figures on the street look a bit less human
And a bit more trash
We say people make us but
What people make us?
What people don't make it?
As we airbrush the street and
Romanticise the guilt away
Won't look it in its face
Greed remembers the stomach plummet day
Her brother turned up to reception
A spectre of sallow skin and furrowed brow
Eyes sharp and darting
She hailed security, pretended not to know him
Power hanging by a thread, she lives with the
Sword of Damocles grazing her neck
And she will guard what she has earned with feral rage
Raise the blade to whoever dares to take it
No care that her family's stories tell this city's history
Stand rooted in legacy
For no one is sacred in this modern world
We will blot them out and write new gods
Put the casual in casualty
Make them submissive and mute them on Twitter
They've given you all, city, what's their reward?

Avert your eyes, pick up the pace
You'd make no difference anyway
Rather save your two quid
For a Starbucks indulgence after a hard day
Hardly a sin, is it, hardly a sin
Is it?
Is it?
Is it?
Hardly a sin
Is it?

The streets outside are raucous, she tells herself
The streets outside are toxic
There's sanctuary in corporate solitude, she tells herself
Alone after dark in her ivory tower block
She makes a toast to memory
Denial leaving stains at the bottom of her glass