What was your status as of Monday?

Low on cling film. Fine for surface spray.
Name one highlight of your current job.

Midway on my journey to the Tube
the sticky men come tumbling down the glass

of the High Commission, a few yards 
north of the Dominion. Hurled, they thwack

the tint, as though each wodge of gunk 
were phlegm hoiked up from

underground, so thick it sprouted limbs.
The sticky men?

The toys I mean.
Those moulded figurines of polymer

and mucilage slash tackifier
that wobble down to earth like a mirage.

The de facto mascots of our plastic age.
And you learned what from your sticky man phase?

Perhaps the smear of north Atlantic ooze, 
the veiny blob of albumen

that Huxley once mistakenly proclaimed 
the missing link

appeared to him like this:
expectorated sputum, anthropoid,

squished against the window of a slide.
Is there anything else you wish to add?

The finest nanotech adhesive yet 
aspires to the tread

of gecko feet.