Those who refuse to be punished will be punished

and safety sits in the centre of the shoal.

I  was deemed fit enough to be at large

where a billionaire's considered a work of art,

a living statue so revered and precious

as to be exempt from taxes.

Pitiless for the hare-lipped and hunchbacked,

club-footed, palsied and poverty stricken,

those consumptive hackers, secretive spitters,

cancerous, sclerotic, pox-ridden

malcontents and criminals.

 

More politic it is to steal socks in the market

and camouflage infirmity and ill luck

behind a cloak of stealth and close ranks

with sundry slackers, slouching shoulder- shruggers,

embezzlers, double dealers and will forgers,

subject oneself to the straighteners' art,

bend to a tolerable conformity;

rather a prescribed and brief confinement,

a measured flogging, bread and water,

than a life sentence replete with hard labour

until Old Nobodaddy Aloft springs the trap.

 

They plead it's their misfortune to be criminal:

'tis wrong way round, their crime's to be unfortunate.

Have they not pestered and plagued into existence,

covetous of warm and sensible motion,

plunged bodiless souls open-eyed into the snare,

willing exiles from that gaseous essence,

the eternal ennui, the world of the unborn?

Heedless of admonitions, they insist on being here!

So shall they answer for whom they are.