When Uranus Is My Scout Planet

Not that I know for a fact,
But presumably most people
Feel the need to hide behind
The skirts of authority figures,
The hooves of the herd,
Anonimity and conformity,
Mediocrity and piety,
To escape the unsettling -
To say the least - feeling
Of being slapped with a label:
Usually a descriptive tag
That highlights any departure
From the norm, be it physical,
Behavioural, attitudinal
Or concerning one's beliefs.

A label yanks
You out of the ranks,
Putting you in the line of fire
Of society's drill-sargeant-types,
Self-appointed echomen, and
YangDiKerah chorusboys,
For having stepped out of line,
Eating with chopsticks
At a table of fingers,
Speaking out of turn
At a caucus of coca clones.

They pelt you with dollops
Of disapproval, jeers, scowls,
Ruses of ridicule,
In a ritual refusal to look
At their own reflections.

Men will whimper, wilt,
And simply shrivel up,
When cast the hex
Of name calls ...

Or melt into the bagan -
Hitching their persona
Onto the bandwagon
To escape the stigma and stigmata
Of having inherited
A different set of desiderata.

But a few rebels, outcasts,
Survive the baying and shank nipping
And have enough chutzpah
To strike out on their own -
Or snap back.

In my time, I've been called a botak,
A bandit and an eccentric, a number
More than most would consider
A fair share, methinks.
Botak on account of Tun Abdul Razak
Having had more hair than my father,
Bandit on account of the common belief
In the 60's that all slant eyes were communist suspects,
And, yes, I do have slant eyes on account
Of having a Yunnan strain in my veins,
Eccentric on account of my preference to stand
On my head when everyone else is slouching on one foot,
Watching me do the heart turning Yoga asana.

Had I given in to the initial welling
Of emotion upon being thus slapped,
I would have have been cast in irons,
A fallen angel recalled to the ranks;
Mercifully, I had enough reserve in the tank
To recoil from the instinctive impulse,
Instead I stewed in my own juices for a while,
Long enough to scour the terrain of my mind
And resources for a way out and this was
what I found from astrology (There I go again,
Setting myself up for another mudpie in my face):

"Your scout planet is Uranus:
You view the world from an unusual perspective,
You have a link to hidden forces,
Giving you a deeper understanding
Of the mysteries of life.
Unusual things happen to you,
Often very abruptly and unexpectedly,
You have unique ways of getting things done,
Which causes people to think of you
As being eccentric."