It wasn’t like going in
the operating and delivery rooms
a first time
staging a secret drama in one corner
shutting my eyes to find courage
in silence, thinking
This is my way to buy out freedom
in the future.
It’s a feeling of loss,
like a dismemberment of a limb.
Fighting and still
keep losing.
I hold on to a pen and paper,
a rosary bracelet around my wrist,
a song,
a preplanned anniversary and my feet
sinking into white sand,
God on the other end of the boat
so we won’t drown
but still I keep drowning.
I come back to that machinery after a lunchbreak
at dawn
I see us workers enclosed in a box against
walls with no windows
no daylight nor dark seeping through,
who are only trying to make money
to feed
Choice is not an entitlement for the poor.
We are like chickens clucking incessantly,
running around in threat
of having our heads cut off
no split-second stops,
no time for still life, a still moment.
Our survival depends on time
the number of required calls screams
like that warning bell when a train is coming
to get you on the rail;
A minute late pushing that button and you’re fired
All for first-world country customers
who call in irate to whine,
to yell out inappropriate adjectives
on you.
Cheap labor for the guys who CAN afford
a continent.
And I never once believed
time can imprison me.
It is infinitesmal like space
It is but a container we use to measure
what can not be measured
In mornings going home figures
pass me by
No privilege to see night get smoked out by the sun
No transitions, no momentums
I find no pleasure with sight anymore
not an ounce of thrill
that they seem so alive
This is history
but I am oblivious
I faint with my eyes open
I drift by the streets like a ghost
I am the rotten orange peel in a waste basket
This
is how we lived
walls on either side of the eyes,
voices whose owners are lost in a hundred more,
coffee and cigarettes with the view of concrete,
the frailty to finish a sentence
without that dreadful and nauseating beep
barging in the headset,
so that a woman who could afford business class seats
can do more than just squinting in anger to herself;
That a man in a white collar job
can demand more than what’s dictated by the rules
and call us a dumb race
People would kill for that salary,
they say
And I say, then kill me.
This place
doesn’t smell of anything,
except money
that and the life force sucked out of a thinking being
My existence diminishes to trivial
A singular obsession for bedrest plaguing me
I have no dreams
except for a day of peace
pen and paper in hand
a single minute detail frozen
no voices buzzing spiels
computers unplugged
Just the world in one crib, falling asleep to my hum.
It is not possible. Here.
I sign my imaginary resignation letter,
hand it to my supervisor,
then give my seat
to another human being
who can stomach being slapped by intangible hands,
who can sit in one place for nine hours,
and go home to chores
and sleep off the desires of a lover,
then wake up to work.
Who can make money despite routine
and find essence in serving the privileged
and remain impersonal at all times,
who could thread the streets
without dreaming
of fire in a watery lantern.
I know exactly what you mean…
ya…bloody hell, ain't it?
thanks jackie 🙂
Great work.