Showing posts with label poem. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poem. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Just Call Me Nostradamus



Hey, All You Inquiring Minds.

I wrote the following poem about September 11'th 2001, which, co-incidentally, was also the weirdest working day of my entire natural life.

Just Call Me Nostradamus

I was selling paper clips to a disembodied voice when the Twin Towers,
Once mistaken for the pillars of Skull Island by the Mighty Kong,
Evaporated into dust.
"My brother's downtown!" it shrieked before the line went dead.

To this day I'm convinced that Tibetan priests in Motuo knew what was happening before we did.  
Exiled in our hermetically-sealed vending machine,
The only scraps of information came from troubled but resolute customers,
Who, like spawning salmon, refused to acknowledge the end of the world until they fulfilled their destiny of procurement.     

A prototypical Arab Spring against the media blackout finally coalesced,
And a cathode ray town crier was ensconced in an alcove of the commissary.  
Plates of gelatinous poutine went cold
As we frittered away our state-sanctioned thirty minute lunch breaks
Watching granite-faced news anchors gamely attempt to convince us that James Bond villains were very real indeed.   
And, for some reason, they all despise us.

I stumbled back to my Potemkin-grey enclosure
And re-assumed the mandible-crown.  
A fellow serf turned to me and asked:
"What is it?  What's going on?" 
And I looked at him and said:
"America's going fascist."  

I then made myself ready
To take endless orders 
For business-related detritus.  
Which, even on that sad day, 
Never stopped.  

  


Monday, July 26, 2010

"Yeah, I got yer 'Softer Side' Right HERE, pal!" - Part V - Requiem

Hey, folks.

Have you ever witnessed a corporate theme day?  They usually happen when your company's HR department gets tired of fielding complaints from staff that they're being driven like Camptown racehorses so they put a bit of heat on the management department to do something special for the serfs.

The powers that be usually views this as the best idea since sloped theater floors but are often waaaaaay too cheap to see it though properly.  Given only a few shekels to work with (and often subsidized by money out of their own moth-eaten wallets) your immediate managers gamely take a run out to "Costco" and pick up an industrial-sized brick pack of beef-flavored wi-i-i-i-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-ners ("Now with 20% less badger knuckles!") and a flat of "hamburgers" made from pure Canadian meef (a synthetic beef-like substance).

With the remaining scratch they usually rent a BBQ, set up a dunk tank, invite you to wear jeans and a cowboy hat in lieu of the usual monkey suit and graciously give you the last half-hour of your shift to revel in the wild, bacchanalian, "Carnival'-esque festivities.

The first of many of such event I attended was a bit of a system shock for me.  It left me so damaged that I was compelled to write a poem at the time to try and help me process what I'd witnessed.  Here it is...

Requiem for a Theme Day   by T.S. Representative


The promise of early liberation provided.
      Swiftly crushed by swipe sentries intent on sharing their misery.


You run, but the guilt of others left behind cannot be waylaid.

Creep.  Sneak.  Crawl.  Sit.

Force yourself to witness the dark spectacle.
          The vicious cabaret.
                                        The sights of the blind.


Drink the liquid, the flavor of your own mortality.
Feast on flesh that tastes of sponge soaked in vinegar.

Our collective Passion Play is truly at hand.

"Why, oh, why has all hope forsaken us?"


The pool of wonder offers sights both kind and horrid.
The harpy invites the gathered to a danse macabre but there are no takers.

And when the elements fly, there comes an unspoken alibi.  

But long after time should heal and miles should give distance.
I still wake up to the choir of screams.
 
July 12, 1996.
           
EPIC: Here's the best "Company" theme there is..."The Electric Company"! (Bonus points if you can spot a ridiculously young, self-conscious lip-syncing  Morgan Freeman!)



100% BONUS IN THE EPIC DEPARTMENT:  Here's a company theme day we can all really get "behind" (cue chorus of groans).  It is slyly subversive, however... 
http://listicles.thelmagazine.com/wp-content/upload/p_332_300_8c44bfc5-49f7-40b9-8280-a2d4aac0edfe.jpg

FAIL:  Seriously, this kinda s#!% gives me nightmares...http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3154/2984527303_14c9f37e6c.jpg