SCHEDULES

 

All my life they have herded me gagged me blinkered me

with those illusions of purpose they call ‘schedules’

 

The day schedule:  rise, eat, school, lunch, more school,

home, homework, eat, sleep

 

The week schedule

Monday through Friday is school

Saturday is sport and Sunday is church

and Monday through Friday is school

 

The year schedule: the terms, the holidays everything leading to

the anti-climax of Christmas

 

The life schedule: school, uni, job, marry, retire, die

 

I defy your schedules!  I will not work I will not die

I will not eat I will not sleep    I wake in the midnight

and I wander deserts knife the hermits in their sleep

eat the capitalists in their baths and I will not work and

I bust mercs with crowbars and I will not die I will not

submit I will not schedule I will not sell out I will not

Channel 7 News  I will not tea and scones in the slow afternoon

I will not job I will not economic rationalise I will NOT

 

I sit on the train forever through the predawn dark

at the edge of a special day and never will I let a

banal moment near me for

 

I am a hero an Arthur an outcast and I live forever

in dawn and twilight in possibility and beauty

 

Nathan Hobby 26/2/2000