swipe right on a mountain of skulls / picked over by gulls / and rats / and souvenir hunters armed with sticks and bats / the whole thing as efficiently organised / as any of the best, most highly-rated genocides / all the wages promptly paid / promotional posters displayed / boots & buttons neatly polished / international banking norms acknowledged / shining lines of communication / cutlery, pots & ammunition / and twirling happily at your chest / the thing that marks you out from the rest / that bulletproof badge of the beautiful vanguard

a cool blue laminated lanyard

or this

a nondescript detention centre / smeared with blood & dried placenta / loose & lazy lines of police outside / arms-folded on armour-plated rides / bagels & babyccinos on the side / and the only thing YOU have to decide / is how in hell you’ll make it out alive / now the King of the Cocks / has cancelled your passport and changed the locks / and doctored clips of you and a fox / and cleared your flat and DNA’d your socks / and cleaned from your numerous offshore accounts / all those improbably sized amounts / you thought would see you safely through / to that country pile in that country purlieu / but the cruelest blow of all / the thing you absolutely cannot deal with at all / the thing that leaves you scared & scarred

the taking of your cool blue laminated lanyard

because

there was nothing you could not do / with your laminated lanyard swinging in full view / no queue you could not jump / no deal trump / or waste dump / no vote you could not turn or policy gazump / it was your Get Out of Moral Responsibility Free card / your Access All Areas for the Die-Hard / your personal, interplanetary-limit platinum card / your Golden Pass to the stars and tsars sipping cocktails in the coolest bars at the sharpest, tippiest top of the London Shard – the loss of which you now lament so VERY hard

your cool blue laminated lanyard