The morning after the night before,
I left my carapace on the floor
As instar five followed instar four—
No metamorphosis here.
As entomologists rightly state,
We exopterygotes thus gestate
And Kafka’s travesties truly grate
On every schoolboy’s ear.
David O’Neill is a frustrated mathematician who has journeyed through a predominantly life-science-based medical landscape for most of his mortgage-paying professional life, eventually finding salvation in the Open University, too close to the end for practical application but sufficiently early for peace of mind and poetic inspiration.