Are we indeed higher forms

Are we indeed higher forms

When so little has improved

In the way we interact

Gloating over misfortune

Has such a very checkered history

The Collesium was sold out

For years

Every performance should have come with a health warning

Thumbs up or down a smug response

To suffering

What difference rubbernecking?

Video recording anguish on a phone

Sending it ‘viral’ is a word so closely linked

To sickness

Is it any wonder

So many have the disease

Slapstick is a gentler way to laugh

But the tramp was always silent

He was never given his voice

Rowan had much less to say

As Mister Bean

Than he did as Blackadder

Whenever there is sorrow

Self-satisfaction hides in the wings

Feeling superior

To those who suffer

As if they brought it on themselves

Gloating over lesser people’s failures

As if they were Emperors

As smug as Jack

Who was always alright on the night

How far away is self-approving

From totalitarianism in aspect,

So thoroughly dictatorial

Perhaps,

However, still utopian for the few

Who find themselves in clover

Whilst the rest of us are in the mire

Dragging our feet

Even when it is obvious

We still believe

There are others who lie much deeper

Down in the mouth, rolling in the dirt

What a way to live

It is too easy to blame all of life’s ills

On other people

Deriding free verse

Laughing at clunky rhyme

Smirking at the simplicity

Of the message in a love song,

Looking down one’s nose

Seems to be part of the human condition

We look up to people as much as they look down

Aspiration has so much to admire about it

If I have an itch, an urge an ambition

To do better

Then there will always be momentum

To bring change

Would that it would include

An end to the desire

To exult in triumph,

Rather than sympathise, empathise

Extend a helping hand

And be wary of the need to say

If you scratch my back then just maybe

I will scratch yours.