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