Wednesday, 2 November 2011

Requiem for the Retail Zombie

The art of "earning a living"
Comes from someone taking,
Someone giving.

To eat and pay the bills
Is to SURVIVE:
Being able to medicate ills
Is not the same as being ALIVE.

When I am here I merely exist:
A joyless state continues to persist.
How is there hope at the end of shift-long strife
When you always exit to find you've missed life?

I am not living, nor am I dead;
Missed opportunities resound in my head
As I labour, huffing, shuffling--
My hours of tenure count for nothing.

When you arrive, hopeful, on hiring day
There's one thing they never tell;
To have other priorities is to sign Life away
And remain in evening-shift Hell.

This is what they have done to me
For refusing to be their fool:
For I can exist as a retail zombie,
Or live and go to school.

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