Smell acrid smoke and sulphur
and wind blown petroleum fumes .
In this lurching landscape
where heavy industry consumes .
And the seagulls swoop and wheel
above their ecological master .
And the tainted soil soaks crude oil ,
spilled by the laughing hands of disaster .
Running like capitalist blood ,
draining the legacy of ever after .

See stick men on top of storage tanks
and noon shadows of measuring rods .
The volatile silhouette dolls
of the new commercial gods .
And the chemical fox scrapes a living ,
pushed into a new-age of unforgiving .
And the flames from the pipes
burn like bright flags in the night .
Security stand like sentinels ,
criss-crossed in beams of light .

Hear the strident siren sound
across the wind-blasted open spaces .
And at every bronze-tinted window
the clones of industrial smiling faces .
And compulsory purchases buy up the inches ,
push the dying farmer out to the fringes .
And the road tankers come and go ,
screened off by intimidating fences .
While men in anonymous chemical suits
sit unidentified on tainted benches .

Touch base with crude reality ,
get the feel for the industrial estate .
Out on the edge of everyone's home town
where the people's voice cuts no sway .
And the ecosystem is poisoned to death
as the oil industry shows them the new way .
And the Barons placate with promises
of work and schools and homes .
And small towns live in the corporate shadows ,
left to rot and to fend on their own .

Taste the burning reaction ,
deep in the back of the throat .
Mugged by the faceless sweet-talkers ,
dead-ended with nowhere to go .
Power is wealded by men in white coats
and the countryside gives up the ghost .
This is a new toxic wasteland ,
soaked in the spittal of industrial hosts .
Who turn their backs on lost heritage
as every blind eye is closed .