Socially Secure Arithmetic


Official unemployment only shows
Itself as the viscious niggard, when
It thinks in you: you’re hostage!

As if, as your confidences are
Taken by all the paperwork:
All your Confidence goes.

Am I reduced to this? That
Question keeps begging, begging.
Worse: that b-word asks: Apt?

Yes, you had your transports!
But as your old vehicle goes
Off the road, you try… and fail.

Life becomes arithmetic: the
things you can’t do multiply,
and things you can subtract.

Unemployment only just shows
Itself economic rationalist, and then
It counts you! - a wedge statistic.


7th October 2006 © Wayne David Knoll