Portate Vino!
Let us go, then, you and I,
While the district manager takes his lunch
Into the courtyard to unravel
Sandwiches dressed in paper shells, the bells
Of the alto who minds the front desk
Rerunning upstairs as we hang our heads.
Then let us go a little further, seep onto Sunset
Beyond the paper cut cracks of our drudge
To a Starbucks or a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf
With a large brown umbrella to talk beneath.
In the conference room, sales associates come and go,
Confused about their ratios.
Have I wrongly pasted cells,
Infecting the chart with mild displasia?
I said I knew Excel but, No, not at all.
Oh, and the fog.
I should have been a motivational speaker.
And indeed there will be time to prospect
PR Firms. There will be time
To send the polycom to the IT Department.
There will be time to wonder, Do I care?
Do I care? There will be time to buckle
Down in the gray, grave ergonomic task chairs.
My work should be a transparent gown
I show through. My work should glitter when I turn
My wrist to check my pulse, my bloodclock.
In the conference room, sales associates come and go,
Confused about their ratios.
I grow old, I grow old. My roots have grown an inch
Since last I dyed. I lean
To find the proper drive and one can see them darken
Like an overdue calendar item in Outlook.
Shall I get lowlights? Do I dare descend the stair
And toss my building access card into a wave of solitude?
As the ocean pushes her pantyhose down
Around her ankles, so must I. My heart is a spade
Without a stem, no root to my reason.
I can hear my managers paging each other.
I do not think that they will page me.
And I have known the managers already, known them all
Managers with wedding rings so rare they bleed.
Is it a stiff striped collar that makes me so depressed?
I have seen them in the courtyard, too,
Biting into their lettuce bills.
We have lingered too long
In orthopedic seating to rest our gazes
On the fortunate ends we could be meeting.
Its been too long since we first were hired
And lied in the interview about our strengths.
Strengths diminish. Alarm clocks fail.
Human voices wake us, and were fired.
