i loath that educational poetry that's intended to address you with scold or searching for a higher tier of morality, there are poems like that out there (rudyard kipling e.g.), with educational / instructional overtones in the way they're written, i always wonder though: did the poet remember the idea of solipsism and writing the poem as if to himself, a note to self, rather than for others to peer into the poem and learn something?
that's the thing though,
i'm a child of immigrants...
actually an immigrant
myself... no, wait, let's do
what the higher tiers of society
call it: i'm an expatriate,
a child of expatriates -
and they still talk with an accent,
me? self-taught english
from the age of 8, retained my
mother tongue nonetheless,
speak none of the two tongues with
an accent, unless i want to,
a friend of mine introduced me
to a greek cypriot, lovingly ridiculed
me as posh... and let me tell you,
sounding posh in essex is hard to do,
i admit it would be harder in
scotland or east london, but essex
is still a hefty mountain to climb -
it's like that crass joke i heard in
the edinburgh comedy club i used to
haunt once a week...
a guy stands up and with a mighty grin
announced himself with over-stressed
elocution: 'you might recognise my accent
(i.e. denoting where he came from,
a great conversation starter on these
islands)... it's educated',
and that really crushed the hazelnut
in his anus -
well if it was a woman telling the same
joke, it would be a crushed hazelnut
between the legs - missionaries
in positions of ardent prayer
and christmas wrapping paper -
because a woman's strength in the leg department
is like the lips of oysters, or any over shellfish
for that matter - insects of the deep blue
(exoskeleton).