White you out

The names we award to the colour of one's collar,

mean less here in Oxford, where the collars will be white,

because daddy's collar is already quite white

(though to say "Daz-white" will seem awfully blue),

where even black skin indicates whiter collars,

or white mothers, who'll white you out,

scraping black from the canvas, leaving it white

and bare, and boring, a space to be filled in,

ignoring the proscriptions of a white collar,

demands of taste behind your pound or dollar,

seeing distinctions like 'high', forgoing the 'low',

consigning baser forms to the blue abyss below,

where I've missed the simple pleasures of

Yates on a Thursday, or sambucca before eleven,

where EastEnders is not just watched, but waited on,

but I'm dipping my collar in bleach, whiting myself out...

(with such a dingy-looking shirt, I'd best not go out).