Sheila Charles SMILE PLEASE
There are a number of occasions
When you need to have a photograph taken
And you are not allowed to smile,
So you can look totally forsaken.
Take your passport photo –
Though the rules could have changed by now –
We were asked NOT to smile.
Well, there was no use having a row.
You ended up looking, either half dead
Or like a convict on the run
And you’re stuck with it for the next ten years
When all is said and done!
(Mine looks as though I don’t even know
The meaning of the word ‘fun’)
My friend had a job as a care-giver.
She has to WEAR her photograph
On a card pinned to her pinny.
She too was not permitted to laugh.
She resembles that prison warden off the T.V.-
Unsmiling, her hair scraped back.
One look at her photo on her badge
Could easily cause a panic attack!
Some folk have a photo on their e-mail.
I decided to get one on mine.
A friend did it. I should have checked it.
I intended to look divine
Instead I had the appearance
Of a female Frankenstein!
Yet all my friends who have seen it
Tell me I look just fine!
What is wrong with their eyesight?
My hair looks like a porcupine!
Mund you, that was my own fault.
I wasn’t particularly clever.
It didn’t strike me that I’d be there
Looking like a toilet brush FOR EVER AND EVER!
illustration by ume-nori
