I’M TOO BUSY

Heavens, how can you expect
that I remember you - or anyone?
That I remember the things you want and need, the things to do and get!
My endless list
around fitting things in and round: meetings, appointments, timetables, budgets, regulations, duties, habits,
not to mention expectations
- my own and that of billions
of fellow-kind.
Gracious, child!
I haven’t even mentioned the obligations to myself!
I learned long ago they can’t come last….

Some say the minutes shrank
or that our brains sped up;
that some cosmic kink is to blame
or that we forgot God,
got too slick at making things
- or wanting them!
Forgot what we are here for
or even who we are - a monkey, robot,
angel-hybrid, lump of hungry flesh
with mandates for godlike control?
Some even suspect an evolving spirit
with a purpose,
hiding somewhere in that mess!l

But, I am too busy for all that.
My basic schedule allows
no chance to think but only DO.
All those errands, school-runs, deliveries and queues…
Ah, Lord save me from those queues:
- in the bank, down the road,
the supermarket check-out, the petrol pump, traffic lights, car-park, bus-stop,
to fetch the kiddies,
even at the Casualty Dept,
and, if you thought sitting at home
might solve it, you are wrong, matey!
The phone has hellish queues of its own, to even speak to a person:
supposedly soothed by hideous music
or sickening female smartphone
talking heads.

Then, I have to find time, energy, petrol, WiFi,
to go shopping,
All the endless clothes to put on and off
the food to put in and out
the stuff to cram our empty homes
and hearts with
Only to then dump them in the Dump
(no time to find where that goes…)
all that endless
on-line or in-window shopping
with its endless packaging
and endless advertisements.
Perhaps we have devolved to
Homo-Consumus…
and my evolutionary purpose,
for sure, silly me, must be to shop.

And what is the end-game here?
What is the point when,
surer than eggs is eggs, my darlin’
we all fall apart one day
and end up 6ft under, if we’re lucky.
Done.