How To Get Things Done Poem by Allan Thorne

I heard a baby
Crying in the food store.
I thought about life
Before you get language
When all you have
To get what you need
Is a smile and a threat
'Give me what I want or I will scream! '

I am fifty now
And it doesn't seem
Like much has changed
Perhaps a subtle refinement
here or there,
But still I get up in the cold black morning,
Tighten my belt,
And walk out into the street
Armed only with a smile
And a threat,
'Give me what I want or I will scream! '