Category Archives: Work Life

Smoke Signal To An Old Colleague

Free Form, Poetry, Work Life

The last time I saw you, you were sitting Indian style on the thin corporate carpet of a faraway conference room
Whining
Why won’t anyone assign me my goddamn spirit animal? Goddamnit!
Your overdone face melting into deep sudden awareness of your own irrelevance
Your peevishness
Known to all but you
Till then

I couldn’t find you on Facebook yesterday and now I wonder how you are
I’d like to tell you that you were a good secretary and that I only wished the best for you
Despite everything you probably think of me
I want to tell you that I always saw you as a lamb in wolf’s clothing and I’m hoping you’ve found that spirit guide
found your way
found better makeup
And are free

Where'd you go?
 

 

Paradigm Shift, The Victim Speaks, Exiting

Family Life, Free Form, Poetry, Work Life

I never sacrificed my family for the office
I was smarter than the rest
Until the night
I sacrificed my family for the office

They forgave me but the guilt and shame still gnaws
I was better than all the management books
I was better than Who Moved My Cheese
Wasn’t I?

Until Malcolm and his fucking demands overwhelmed me
And all the balance I’d achieved evaporated
Like spilled water in Death Valley or on Mercury
I never read metaphor books but probably should have

I never found ways to apologize
And now I just drink, here on the bench, in our backyard
Waiting for the missus and the mistakes, I mean kids, to settle in
The only sacrificing I’m doing tonight is my liver, ya get me

I don’t know that I can face the demon again
The asshole Malcolm who often smells of talcum
Believe me, I couldn’t make that up
Too many brains cells have died in the making of this poem as it is

Indulge me this long goodbye
Because I really need to stop writing
The pen is heavy now, the spirit dulled and dulling
If you see “penis” in “pen is,” then Freud was right and we’re all fucked

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