By Ron Barton
Where are all the standardised people?
Row by row they sit,
minute by minute the clock ticks
their life away.
Shade in the bubble –
A
C
B
A
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start.
A round peg will fit
in a square hole
if you plane down the edges.
Where are all the standardised people?
The uniformity of boys
grown into men in suits,
pleated girls who’ve become
pencil-skirted women –
all clad in 2B or HB grey.
Where are all the standardised people?
You make love
with military precision,
timetabled
according to ovulation.
In, out, in, out –
a seed is sown,
a child begins to sprout
and in nine months
it makes its scheduled appearance.
Crying controlled,
toilet trained,
bred to fit the mould.
Where are all the standardised people?
Clock in
for your accepted activities,
normalised notions
of right and wrong.
You drive between the lines
you once strived to colour inside.
Clock out.
Where are all the standardised people?
Image by Dmitri Popov