Office Poem

Today I feel generic, replaceable as Tupperware. My lofty ideals, values altruism have given way to a reality of windowless office cubicles slouching over screens backache-inducing desk chairs microwaved lunches, sad and salty soup measurable objectives and tense necks conference calls and Zoom links failure and fluorescent lights highway commutes, gas stations donuts and diet soda staff meetings and small talk marketing and branding greasy keyboards, program evaluations webinars and gossip slogans, taglines jpegs and Google docs passive-aggressive memos strategic planning, professional development battles of power, ego and passion games of manipulation. Wallowing in the virtual world to save the real one. Supposedly. Today, what have I accomplished? Let me report my data: Battling the printer for 90 minutes, I wasted 43 pages of un-recycled paper searched 12 minutes for my stapler dropped 7 paperclips behind my desk left 11 sticky note messages re-wrote my "to do" list twice sent 29 emails avoided 5 phone calls daydreamed through 3 hours of meetings all fueled by 2.5 cups of coffee, 36 M&Ms, and 4 aspirin. Today the futility of my labor the inauthenticity of my life descends upon me with the damp fog of dread. Years, years of my life, where have they gone? My evening commute-- driving home from saving the world, I glimpse a dead kestrel on the roadside all rusted blood and blurred feathers next to the ubiquitous plastic bags and aluminum cans and speed on by so fast, my mind barely registers its limp wings fluttering in the January wind.