Selfishness

Entirely less a consequence and more
an absent sense, the arrogance they
frame as normative behaviour fazes
and disgraces. Don’t want to see their
faces – avid eyes as shrewd as thieves
delighting in their thievery. Their cries
a strident me! me! me! they prey upon
the weak self-centeredly – say in self
defence that they deserved it anyway.

No charity abrades their dear conceit,
they’d steal the room without a glance
at occupants whose rightful place
would grace a chance for peace and
piety. A queue, they say, to where?
You’re lined up aimlessly! Propriety
would never mar their need of self-
aggrandisement, embrace a selfless
epithet unless it bore a patent name.

Where do these beasts of selfishness
all breed? Their genre rose from seed,
a dour, phlegmatic cognisance that we
are wreckage instanced more in failure
than success, where more is less and
nothing satisfies until there’s nothing
left. And nothing left is what we’ve
now achieved – so go and reap...
© 22 March 2008, I. D. Carswell