Workaday Slave

Five o’clock, the bell rings
Crusty and tired, falls out of bliss
A cup of scalding sweet mud
A shower, a dump, and a piss
Wraps himself in a silken strait jacket
A noose about his neck no less
Hits the highway before it hits back
Big Brother’s day is anyone’s guess.

Eight o’clock, the meetings begin
Resigned and nodding, the corporate toady
Pushes endless forms thru mouseholes
Crosses his T’s in a regulated rhapsody
His tune called by a condescending heir
He kowtows to the boss’ secretary
Swallows his pride, even chokes on it too
He warns himself he’s got to be wary.

By lunch he’s worn down, can’t see straight
Such anger supressed, the headaches of late
Lesser men order and expect him to obey
The despair pervades his subservient day.

Two o’clock, they review his work
So viciously spiteful, holds back his speech
Another week wasted in his life as a tool
How he dreams of a cocktail on the beach
Yet back to his hole amidst the shuffling dread
To satisfy an ungrateful capital leech
He wants to cry out at his depressing lot
The future he seeks is beyond his reach.

Five o’clock, he packs it in for home
Wryly thanks whatever deity is new
That he didn’t lose this job that he believes
He needs to keep his bills from overdue
No overtime needed today, that’s a change
He can jockey his wreck thru a freeway untrue
To a selfish wife whose dad gave her the house
He barely tolerates, a condition he rues.

Six o’clock, the kids are at his heels
I need an iPod and I need a phone
Barely catching his breath walking in thru the door
Vastly uninspired, yields a pathetic moan
Ripping off his necktie and suit in step
Guzzling cheap beer, tired to the bone
His nagging wife needs him to paint the house
That he knows he will never really own.

His dinner is choked down, gruel at best
Profoundly frustrated, too beat down to be mad
The wife has the remote control, like he cares
There’s nothing on the tube for him, it’s all bad
She’ll never turn it off and turn him on
He hopes to dream of the life he never had
And as he involuntarily sinks into uneasy slumber
His only thought is undeniably sad:

It’s only Monday!