How can it be? The day's but half over. Looking around, I've nothing to do but practice my acting skills, as I sit and try to perfect the delicate art of making it look like I'm working hard. The clock on the wall shows how little time has fled since I've started.
Memorial Weekend Feast
This last weekend turned out to be a mighty feast. Our Saturday started with the beers we drank at home before going out to dinner. La Risata in Pasadena's Old Town wasn't crowded. We started with caprese, then a salad, (the one that's named for Caesar); now the entree - a giant plate of gnocchi, and a bottle of wine - a pinot noir. We came back home and we had some apple pie, just freshly baked, and we topped it off with ice cream. In the morning, we had, along with coffee, eggs and bacon, with hash-browns, toast and jam. At four we started with drinks whose name defies the meter: vodka and orange juice mixed together. Then, for dinner, we had potato salad - (very creamy) - then Caesar salad followed; for our bottle of wine, a chardonnay. Then crispy, crunchy fried chicken and some gravy, rolls and corn on the cob made up the rest of dinner. Pie ala mode was our dessert. For breakfast, odd as it seems, we ate more pie and ice cream. Also, we had a roll and gravy. Janet even ate more potato salad. For our cocktails in the afternoon, I used the blender for lemon margaritas. Then we both had a couple Irish whiskeys. Monday's dinner was mostly food left over from the one that we so enjoyed on Sunday.
The GOP
Now the Republican party says that it represents working people, whatever their income, race, creed or color. Oh, come on ! Who do they think they are fooling?
My Job
Here, on the seventeenth floor, we sit in our offices, ever counting the money that Disney makes selling trinkets to children, raking the profits by using labor, and turning it into capital lining the silken pockets of wealthy shareholders.
Robbers
How can a person take money, buy raw materials cheaply, pay, to the workers who add the value, extremely low wages, then sell the new, value added product, and take up the lion's share of the increase in value?
Them
People who always get other people to do their work for them find, when the time ever comes they're forced to rely on their own wits, something is pitifully lacking.
Nightmares
Dreams that disturb us while sleeping, (terrible ones we call nightmares), pale when compared with the true life horror of getting up early, braving the wretched commute, then wasting the day at the office.
My Day
I arrive at the office in the morning, hang my coat on the door, and get a cup of coffee, or, if the pot is cold and empty, make a fresh one to have along with breakfast. This consists of a donut, or a pastry, or a cereal. Then I start the dreary task of making myself look like I'm doing work. I'll kill a few minutes in the bathroom. Then it's back to the kitchen for a glass of water. After a while, I head on down to take a walk, or just lounge around the lobby. Then it's back to my desk and looking busy, faking work until lunch provides its welcome break. Then back to the agonizing task of doing practically nothing. Popcorn, cocoa, candy, various other small diversions fill the rest of the day, until it's time to end the farce, and I finally make my exit.
Antics
Over beers I muse, and recall the day we studied on a couch up in Kirchoff hall. The room was crowded. Emerson, Lake and Palmer played from a speaker.
As we left I made you a little offer. "Drop a penny off of the mezzanine, and hit the guy who's slumbering on the couch, a level below us."
That you did, thus earning the quarter promised by me when I made you the little offer. Laughing, we ran out of the room, avoiding any detection.
Albin's Drugs
This I recall from a day in August of 'seventy-seven: Hollywood Way and Magnolia Boulevard meet a few blocks from here, in the city of Burbank. Now there's a Thrifty, but once the name of the store on the southeast corner - a drugstore - was Albin's. Then, long ago, in the summer, Danny O'Heron had many flyers he needed delivered. Placing the flyers on people's cars, homes and lawns was my job. I stopped to get lunch at the in-store counter at Albin's. I heard a customer taunting the waitress, "Elvis, your hero, your lover's dead." I cared little, as rock for me had begun with the Beatles. Elvis had seemed like an old-time idol, not unlike Sinatra. That I recall from a day in August of 'seventy-seven.
Catullus 51
He who always sits with you, and who gazes at you, and who hears you so sweetly laughing, seems to me to equal a god, and sometimes even surpass one -
if a thing like that is all right to say. What misery! This rips away all my senses. When I see you, Lesbia, I am tongue tied. Words seem to fail.
Flames run through my body, and down my limbs. My two ears ring and buzz, and my eyes now fail me, covered, as they are, with a blinding darkness blacker than midnight.
Your Hair
Once in a while, when I think how boring it is in my dreary office, I look in my drawer; something reminds me of you: copper colored hair, wound up in a tight little ball - a part of you in my desk. Happier thoughts fill my mind.
Nobody Knows
Nobody knows what I do. My job is not noticed by nosy bosses who watch over all. Nobody knows what I do. Decoys abound on my desk - some stacks of paper to make it look like I'm working hard. Decoys abound on my desk. Seldom do I get a call. My phone just sits there in blessed silence for most of the day. Seldom do I get a call. On the computer I play, since a modem allows me to access other computers from work. On the computer I play. Poems take up some of my time, as it takes hard work to perfect the various meters and rhyme. Poems take up some of my time. Food takes my mind off of work, and I spend lots of time in the kitchen getting a snack or a drink. Food takes my mind off of work. quitting time comes, and I'm gone in a flash, bolting out of the door. I clear out as fast as I can. Quitting time comes, and I'm gone.
Bank Worker
Bank of America pays you to ask those in line if they have a simple transaction to do. I have no problem with that. Grilling the customer, though...that starts to get very annoying. "No, thank you" should be enough. After that, leave me alone.
Cot Fantasy
After I rise from my soft warm bed, and I drive off to work, a cot would be nice there. My shiny desk could be used to conceal the evidence. When I would start to feel I was falling asleep, I'd go to my cot's secret drawer and hurriedly open it up. Then into the cot I would jump with joy. No one out in the hall would know that inside of the room I lie, sleeping peacefully, and my mind would be freed from the nagging noise that disturbs it all day. The others would not even note my presence, or lack thereof, as I quietly made up for all the rest that I'd lost from a lack of sleep. They go on with the daily toil, while I snooze and I curl up under a blanket. They can not view me, for there is no clear, glass window to see through. They'd need an x-ray to see through the door. I yearn for a world where my work day zoomed by, as I lie there sleeping.
Nightmares