Birdwatching

Tragedy minus glory equals just another story Like the prisoners that 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 or to nations I'm digging moats and burning flags and bridges just as a precaution If you need me I'll be sitting on this island, birdwatching 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 We're neither rising like a phoenix Nor are we dying like the dodos So let's leave the endless questing To the Sams and 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