Refraction.

Leftist.

My Father said that, in his youth, he was a leftist like me,
But - when you get older - you realise
That everybody is just out for themselves.
My Father who grew up in a council house
Will drive past his old neighbourhood and say
That the people living there should have tried harder in school;
That those people are leeches, beggars and scroungers,
And - should you give them an inch - they'll take a mile.
They don't want to try, he says.
They believe they're entitled to good things, he says.

I sigh. When I ask for examples, he mutters some vague nonsense
About people spending their benefits on a television,
As though he thinks that the poor don't deserve
Any quality of life at all. I ask about the computer that his parents
Got him; the one that sparked his talent for writing code
And led him to his middle-class lifestyle. He shrugs.
From the car window, I see a single mother put the change from her
Weekly shop into a homeless man's hat.
I ask my Father if she is the selfish working class he talks about;
He replies that the homeless man will probably buy drugs.
I question why we don't have more support for addicts,
And he blames the lack of police officers on the streets for
The drugs getting around in the first place.

I sigh again. It is strange how individualistic a man can become
When he has the money to look after himself.
"If I can do it, why can't they? They're not working hard enough" is what
He says - yes, he worked hard, but he had
A natural cleverness and an aptitude for his career that many are not blessed with.
"Your Mother worked three jobs and still couldn't afford a house." I said,
Tiredly. "Did she not work hard enough?"
My father rolled his eyes. "She was unskilled. If my Father hadn't spent
So much money at the pub, they would have been fine."
"Maybe there should have been more support for your Father's problem,
Or do you suppose more police officers is a better solution
Than helping addicts recover?" I asked - we'd come full circle.

He doesn't want to pay taxes if they go towards helping people
With a legitimate medical problem. He says he'd rather
Pay the damn council to fill in the potholes on our street.
The lack of empathy is no surprise to me as I know my own Father well enough,
But the callousness of it shall never sit well with me.
He says that once I have my own career, I will resent 'these people' too,
And that I'm naïve if I believe any different;
That I will see the true nature of humanity and I will hate it.

The day I stoop to the pessimistic ideas of my Father - I tell him -
Will be the day that I die. How could anyone care so little
About not only the people around them,
But the people they grew up with?
How could a boy whose future was granted by an old PC
(That his mother had gone into debt to buy)
Grow into a man who doesn't believe that a parent in poverty
Should receive enough money to uplift their child's dreams?

I will always be a leftist; I see the people around me,
And I feel their struggle, their vibrance, their compassion.
My father looks at me as though I'm mad
When I say that I don't care what people spend their benefits on -
He is the kind of man whose mind leaps straight to the worst.
I am the person who thinks of the little boy receiving his
Secondhand PC and discovering his future;
The children finding their dreams as they watch football
On a television screen.