All Things Considered

Hello. Recently I went to a lovely little gig in which each of the poets were paired up with a member of the audience who gave us a stimulus from which we had to scribble something in the twenty or so minutes made available to us. I was asked to write on 'not being so hard on yourself', which I did, and having remembered that I'd kept a copy for myself, thought I'd share it with you. it's called "All Things Considered" and goes thusly:

All Things Considered

You are a poorly-evolved ape,

Barely descended from the trees.

You are, at best, a work in progress.

Half-scrubbed out mistakes festoon your DNA,

Relics from your ignoble ancestry.

You're not made for this world,

and, though it was made for and by other apes,

It is a botched job as well.

What I'm saying is that you're not perfect,

And you're lost in a society which is fraying at the seams.

So you're going to make mistakes,

Often and spectacularly.

There will be cock-ups galore.

The universe will crap on you from a colossal height,

And then laugh at you

In the voice of a half-drunk Alan Rickman.

In short, shit's gonna go wrong.

Don't worry about it.

You're doing bloody well,

Fucking miraculous, all things considered.

So don't be so hard on yourself,

You'll get the hang of it soon.

And that shirt looks great on you, by the way.

One hopes you're well,

yrs,

ADWoodward