parody of TS Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

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.