Birdwatching

Tragedy minus glory equals just another story

Like the prisoners who stayed behind in Plato’s allegory

Or the poor forgotten second-last passenger pigeon

Anyone can fail but truly losing takes ambition

I’m suspicious of ambitious folks, but I’ll race you to the bottom

Where the clocks don’t tick or tock and you can smoke ‘em if you got ‘em

Carpe-ing every diem’s no achievement, it’s exhausting

If you need me I’ll be sitting on this island, birdwatching

I’ve read the The Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective People

I know I’m probably the liver, not Prometheus or the eagle

But I’d rather be a giver than a taker or a faker

everybody’s just another paycheque to the undertaker

I have an allergy to strategy and inspirational quotations

My reaction’s anaphylactic to vocations and to nations

I’m building moats and burning flags and bridges just as a precaution

If you need me I’ll be sitting on this island, bird-watching

There’s a flower in the compost and a beach below the pavement

We’ll outlive the rich and famous if we remain aimless and patient

Neither rising like a phoenix nor dying like the dodos

So let’s leave the endless questing to the Sams and to the Frodos

Anthems are anathema, enough with rousing choruses

And achieving is as torturous as tickling slow lorises

The search for more and better gives us worse and fewer options

So let’s quit while we’re behind, and do some birdwatching

Entrepreneurship is capsizing and it will surely sink

Jump and swim to Garbage Island and just sit and have a drink

While everybody else is busy polishing their coffins

We’ll be mixing cosmopolitans, and birdwatching