The Difficated Compli-Cult

The Difficated Compli-Cult of modern life doth wear

Upon my senses 'til my brain commands "pull out your hair"

Which wouldn't do, as seasons change, it's getting cold out there

With senses bent and muscles spent, protesting that the game's unfair

The economic certainty that they have all and I have none

Is salvaged by absurdity, no need to eat a small hand gun

Which I don't own, most thankfully, Or else there be one less,

wide and complaining mouth to feed, my own,

under the irate sun

So keep your head out of plastic bags, and hold it up both proud and tall,

Raise high the flag of "no retreat," each time your backside finds the wall

And when at last the day has passed, the turtle fed and gutters cleaned

Your earnings nil, save for the pill at bedtime and the meaning gleaned

Old *Kafka knew the in and out, and made the rounds of down,

The sideways maze of wrong-way doors and corridors of angled

Corners leading round, to where you started, starting place

Without the pay of board games played when broke and bored, a rodent race

These flu-like symptoms upside-down I won't be in to work today,

And hanging, hideous insect dangling, tell the doctor "Bring bug spray!"

*The last six lines of this poem refer blatantly to "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka

This may be obvious to some readers, but I've met more than one individual with a Masters Degree who'd never heard of, much less read Kafka.