Alchemisland

Get the lead out, lad

Get out there and be fed fast; dazzle ’em, show these young turks

The meaning of graft, define hard work

Leaders or followers, I’d rather be led

Primarily, I’d rather be submerged in molten lead until dead – deserved

I can’t be a dole drawing twerp

And I don’t have the stones to be a CEO murderer

Advancement, betterment, promotion, bringing a career further

At a team building event, necking frankfurters with Curtis Tourist

Board and boss want it all better everytime, in that sense purists

Next morning getting a cure, wink at a pair of beurs

I cringe at a memory of me shouting “Give us a twirl” to the poor IT girl

We’re all corpsevampire pale, hunched in our computer worlds

The screen and its binding words all the world that’s observable

When I work I feel like I’m doing worse

Squirting sweat to fill my purse

New mams shuffling down sardined trains early

In uncomfortable pencil skirts

Every day feels worse as my perversely busy bus skirts the college curb

It physically hurts me, verbs all self-abuse

Sitting all day crooked at a computer in a quiet booth, it haunts me

Waiting for the machine to boot so I can shoot down repeat requests

For mercy from debtors, rule breakers and poker obsessives

In my suit, in the booth, eight hours stewing

Shiny boots, come in tomorrow like a first person shooter

Ruing the day I signed the contract

I spurn all human contact, hermit project

I have no role anymore, I roll from one day to the next

This being ignored is utterly unendurable

I must write something scintillating and durable, endurable by the reader

Perhaps something enjoyable to read of an evening

If that’s not too ambitious a reading of this scene

I tease myself with thoughts of schemes and plots

Anonymous letters tacked onto gym lockers

Gin glasses clinking together, coins clanking into coffers

Offers, enrolling officers cajoled into favoured moulds.