Thank you gentlemen and bullfrogs for your dutiful assemblage,
In this, the 2022nd year of our disorder.
I’ve called you all together for a spot of cake
And so may find a moment between breakouts
To address what I see as our greatest problem:
That is to say, the greatest problem facing us ourselves
Which is of course, us and ourselves.
We stand at the centre of our own respective nations
Sowing our infractions with each dutiful misstep.
How do we, I thought, each individually combat,
The great dilemma, this great disassemblage
Of ourselves as we trickle out into, what I will here call
With great reverence, the people--
Who are inherently, unnecessarily, not quite us.
Each nation a glorified tapestry
Of difference
Yet, we must, they must, remember
We are held together by the same valiant thread,
That is and must be us.
I thought--how best do we see land as one land,
Our land, us and ourselves,
I thought, well it must be the sea.
The sea around us, encasing the caustic caps,
From you to me, that is--we,
Can all look out and say see the sea?
The sea is not we.
Anything that flows, travels inward,
This, my dear fellows, is our common enemy.
At sea no man, that is, a man of the people, bears significant weight.
At sea they are all the same,
Little dancing tangerine buoys,
Marking nothing but another wave.
Should not the people fear the sea? As homogeneous as it is?
Together they can be the ‘we’ against the sea,
And by we, I mean to say--they are we, are us, ourselves, and me.
See how it encroaches, and washes away what we,
And they and us have established
The clear lines marking the spaces between
The things that make us all aligned
Tidied, and dispersed as we are.
How well we have established
Our little melted pots
The little lots set out in the web
Stemming gracefully from me or we.
So, what say you--shall we?
And with that, the I’s have it.
Let us move on to tea.