Fun piece 4. Work??

Open the big doors for fork lift trucks
Bringing massive tins of tomato pulp
To top up steaming vats of ketchup.
Then close the doors to keep the flies out.
But the flies flew in with the trucks
To give more zest to the ketchup.

My protest was seen as trouble-making
So they followed the normal procedures
And promoted me to vegetable soup.

Open empty cans on a moving belt,
Before being filled with soup, I had to
Place five peas in every passing tin.
They knew I was about to enter university
So gave me a mathematical job.

I practised my mental arithmetic
With every sequence of one to ten peas in each can.
They found out and promoted me again
To the bad boys group.

They were engineering students
Taking full tins off a conveyor belt
And putting them in boxes.
Except mostly they didn't.
They put good use to their studies
To get the machines to break down
It seemed on their own unaided volition.

The mechanic, reading his newspaper,
Would say it was to company's benefit
That he should do nothing- day after day.
With the bad boys
He had to work as never in his life.

The trouble with final graduation
Is that cleverer ways need to be found
To avoid work or screw the system.
But that's what educations's supposed to teach you
-Isn't it.