(In which I take a charming Victorian children’s poem and hopelessly angst it up. The original is “Seven Times One” by Jean Ingelowe, and it can be found here: http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=skinner&book=verse1&story=seven )
There’s no dew left on the daisies and clover.
There’s nothing new under the sun.
I’ve said my “seven times” over and over:
Seven times three’s twenty-one.
I am old, so old, I must earn a living.
My time at uni is done.
But the job market‘s harsh and unforgiving,
And the Job Centre is no fun.
It looks like an office but it smells like a sewer,
You get dirty looks from the guard,
And as far as the staff know, there’s no sentence truer
Than, “You’d get a job if you tried hard.”
They say, “When you have a job interview set,
Greet the panel with a bright smiling face.”
I knew that already; now help me to get
Any interviews in the first place.
I know how to shower. I know how to dress.
I know how to show gumption and pluck.
But none of that will stop all this job hunting stress;
The reason being, the economy’s fucked.
So, who wants to hire a twenty-one-year-old
With no experience and even less guile?
Gordon Gecko I ain’t. I’m left out in the cold,
Right along with my fake plastic smile.
I know that you’ll say that the world doesn’t owe me,
So I‘ll have to make my own way.
But the world doesn’t trust me as far as it can throw me,
And I’m seven times three today.
camelwithout 