Buffet Paranoia
At the corporate luncheon, your love
For pork roast outweighs your need
For market share. You pile eight courses
Onto one plate, you take only the walnuts
From the Waldorf Salad. The speaker discusses
Companywide frugality policies while you indulge
The inescapable complicity that is the deviled eggs.
"The ATM ate my bank card today," says the voice
From the podium, while you shuffle off for seconds
And stand before the sneeze guard, contemplating
Six different kinds of macaroni. The other middle
Managers and investment hacks and quasi-tycoons
Remain tucked politely into their tables. "I suffer,"
You think, "from an objection to the times, and no
Amount of sales indicators will ever repair the wound."
You were not meant for the dry convulsions of so-called
Civilization, but to feed, as now, with lusty vision,
To abduct and ravish secretaries, and crash the mail
Cart into Steve, your rival for division chief, for
You know that life is not all figures or accountings.
A monster that churns the competition, yes, a maw
that grinds with swift heedlessness, that needs no proxy
statements: yeah, that's life. And as you clutch
an onion roll in a pair of plastic tongs, it wills you:
Survive. Survive. Survive.
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