Poem of the Day...nay, of THE YEAR...

Ok, I have had an absolutely diabolical couple of days at work.  Wall to wall shit, just awful atmosphere.  I am sick of explaining myself to my fuckwit boss.  Marked down again in my appraisal.  Cunt.  So, I turn to Philip Larkin to soothe me with his purple prose.

You know what, Philip, me old mucker?  I AM courageous enough to shout 'stuff your pension!'
I yearn for a change, for a simpler, less stressful way of life.  I just NEED the powers that be to accept my note of interest.


Toads - by Philip Larkin 

Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?

Six days of the week it soils
With its sickening poison -
Just for paying a few bills!
That’s out of proportion.

Lots of folk live on their wits:
Lecturers, lispers,
Losers, loblolly-men, louts-
They don’t end as paupers;

Lots of folk live up lanes
With fires in a bucket,
Eat windfalls and tinned sardines-
They seem to like it.

Their nippers have got bare feet,
Their unspeakable wives
Are skinny as whippets - and yet
No one actually _starves_.

Ah, were I courageous enough
To shout, Stuff your pension!
But I know, all too well, that’s the stuff
That dreams are made on:

For something sufficiently toad-like
Squats in me, too;
Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,
And cold as snow,

And will never allow me to blarney
My way of getting
The fame and the girl and the money
All at one sitting.

I don’t say, one bodies the other
One’s spiritual truth;
But I do say it’s hard to lose either,
When you have both.