Who and what am I?
We walk on a ball of mud
That spins in a churning sky.
Welcome to our convention
Wear this label on your breast
So that all may know you are categorised
And damned like all the rest.
For all must have a role to play
A purpose and a function,
From the first baptismal bathing
To the final extreme unction.
All must be deemed a do-er,
And answer to ‘what do you do?’
Docketed dubbed, deemed and denoted
And moved to an orderly queue.
So tell me, are you a Princess?
A poet, a pleb’ or a Pope?
An aspirant apprentice,
Nothing yet; but live in hope?
Do you define yourself through others?
‘My Uncle met Obama.’
‘Lloyd George screwed my great grandmother.’
‘My Sis’ has a bar in Grenada.’
Vocations get disrupted.
That guy used to be a salesman,
But now he walks the Wolds
And writes articles for ‘The Dalesman.’
No more jobs for life now!
Just schizophrenic swapping
And we have to grin and bear it
And call it ‘career hopping’.
But the role that Nature gave us
Is one that we all still fit.
To convert carbohydrate and protein
And cover the Earth in shit.
