Poet Felicia Olusanya in a recent TV ad for Laya Healthcare Ireland

Kevin writes:

A new poem inspired by the UK poet who did an advertisement for a building society/bank and the Irish poet who did one for a private health insurance company which is now owned by AIG, one of the largest financial services companies in the world (and the recipient of many billions of Dollars of U.S. tax payers bail out money in 2008).

The Acquisition

No longer exactly young
but still in a hurry
to board the bus bound for
what they call
somewhere.

Emerging poet acquires agent
so sang the update.
Or is acquired by,
it neglected to add.

From now on they
will focus less on the bits that don’t pay,
like putting one word in front of another.
Only the sentimental still
measure the world in syllables.

It’s time to move on to other currencies,
to stride confidently through the capital of –
it could be anywhere –
trying to persuade the affluent

to insure their eyeballs,
their coming arthritis,
their battle-hardened large intestines
against the vagaries of the public health system;

then graduate to be
the strawberries and whipped cream voice
propositioning the consumer
with artificial arms, cheap
easily flammable seat belts, electrodes
for use in enhanced interrogations
of those you, the consumer, want answers from.

Increasingly, when the future lurches at you
through some screen or other
to flash its hawker’s suitcase
of stuff it has in mind for you
they
will be its wide smiling face.

Kevin Higgins

Pic; Laya Healthcare