The harsh alarm beep
destroys dreams,
we force eyes open
splitting crust at the seams.
Rusty, we stand – shaken, brave,
weak, scared,
our subconscious scratching at the stitches
so carefully woven
over a thousand past lifetimes.
We bury pull sickie reflexes
and sprint headlong into
the ubiquitous every day raid,
where time thieves grab
every second they can.
Where we scurry escape to
the solace of toilet cubicles
to lay cables
that electrify fantasies of
wielding cricket bats
contacting brutal with windows,
computer screens
and co-worker's faces,
and sparing, saving the angel colleague
we pierced so many
silent fluttering glances with
and driving off into our
gloriously unknowable futures,
like a Bruce Springsteen song
animated with
pulsing flesh and dignity.
But the flush destroys these meanderings,
and heads hung low in dread
we step into the bullet-riddled warzone
grumbling in marooned harmony:
“I'm only working here
because I need the fucking money”
Let's close our eyes.
We're fifteen.
Precocious sponges absorbing
all immediacy,
our backbones priming
for invisible horizons,
sizing up our forthcoming days
forcing the future to adapt to our prophecies.
But somewhere in the shifting sands
our spines dissolved,
our central security systems collapsed
and the tentacles took over,
camouflaged by aspirational posterlife dreams,
bringing bacon back,
smart/cas dress codes,
20% staff discounts
and pat mottos such as:
“well, I don't take my work home with me” .
The tentacles reached into our craniums
and began to suck out extraneous hopes,
dulling our irises with subjugation
until nothing but repressed sweaty tears
and a fear of rent arrears remained.
Let's open our eyes.
We're in, as Wayne Campbell would say, 'the now'.
We pointlessly flush the toilet,
and lurch back to the shop floor
like zombies on death row.
Our area manager
(a grotesquely fat, burnt marshmallow
of a man named Ivor Pie)
caresses and tickles the oily, purple tentacles
and hisses sweet nothings
into the air-holes.
The tentacles grin, hardening and pulsating,
and suck fierce at our brains in gratitude.
Ivor rubs a greasy, gleeful hand
over his folded and refolded stomach
and shoots us eyes full of silent weapons.
We robotically take off our T-shirts
and bend over,
allowing Ivor to snort a huge road
of three parts baking soda
one part Peruvian cocaine
off our blistered, breaking backs.
The powder fireworks Ivor's temper,
and he ferociously kicks us into a pile of blank anonymous products.
“CLEAN THAT UP YOU WORKSHY CUNT!”
he screams.
“AND IF I HEAR OF ANY COMPLAINING OF 'ABUSE OF STAFF'
YOU'LL FEEL MY FUCKSTICK INFUSED WRATH!
FUCK THE LOT OF YOU, I'M OFF TO GREGGS”
Ivor makes his wobby exit.
We stand, shaken, brave
weak, scared
and face the coagulating, whinging hoards of public,
who moan about antiquated midcore pornography
and demand refunds on lottery tickets
because they didn't win.
The whinges fuse with the dull pounding
in the back of our brains
which punch out
a shriek of useless marooned harmony:
“I'm only working here
because I need the fucking money”.
Ivor Pie now reeks of pastry
and the death of souls
as he disappears amongst
the Friday night faceless cock rummaging
masses who infest this dingy hovel.
All the men become a creepy, bulging mass
of silent leering and crass cheering
as our tits and arse dance
dispassionately on the stage,
ageless stiletto gyrations on automatic
stiffening twitching pricks.
Banknotes float on the smoke
of rusted power-driven lust
and become fuse perfectly with our G-strings.
The music (some shitty house number)
numbs almost all other sound
to us: the dancers of the neon skin rhythms.
Sometimes we enjoy our job,
sometimes we don't,
and it's unfortunate that Stan,
an estate agent from Hackney,
head thick with cheap champagne
and three parts baking soda,
makes a grope for us
at a moment when, it must be said,
we're not enjoying our job.
As we feels his rankling fingers grasp our ankles
we turn and fix him.
He freeze frames under our glare,
his face everything we fear and hate:
another cunt filled with venal venom
and a twisted sense of entitlement
too much money
and too little respect
pumping through his veins.
Every rubbed raw memory
rushes up inside us
like we've just double dropped
and our senses pop,
exploding,
splitting,
ripping into raging, burning fragments
and everything blanks
and suddenly we're rebel Atlas'
kicking away foundations of heaven and Earth
and letting them crumble into space
and our full forced arm shoots out
and drives a stilhetto heels
deep into his eyeball,
harder and thirstier with every shove,
muscle gives way to more muscle
as his addled brain is punctured
and Stan's soundtrack
to the final shutdown
is our gored screaming
reverberating in marooned harmony:
“I'm only working here
because I need the fucking money”.
It's why we're drinking away sores
and rioting in hammered high street small scale wars,
all for the elemental relief of the beer, the sweat
and sticky floor,
soaking our psychosis,
then wringing it dry
to destroy
– just for a moment -
the flickers of the tie noose
and gallows suit...
The harsh alarm beep
destroys our dreams,
we force our eyes open
splitting crust at the seams.
Rusty we stand – shaken, brave,
weak, scared,
and stagger down to
the jam-packed underground
which swells with sweaty, rage-prickled skin
and bulges with comedown weekend sins.
We're a thousand Orpheuses
hopelessly marching into the underworld
to reclaim damned damsels.
We hold up candles,
we squint eyes,
but find no psychopomps,
just the diminuendo throb
of our former consciousness
as we catch flickering
scrunched up faces against plastic windows
rattle past, and darkly vanish.
We're banished to drag out battle-worn shields
to block out the pulsing pain that reels behind
and belies blank, bloodshot, coffee-slapped eyes.
Eyes that, occasionally,
glance up to try and find a sky
and silently scream
in marooned harmony:
“I'm only working here
because I need the fucking money”.
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