Monday, May 11, 2009

Poetry cubed

Anyone who has ever worked in a cube in an office environment knows that it can be pretty hard to concentrate sometimes. But did you know that it can be an occasion for poetry? An office worker who has asked to remain anonymous sent me this today. I think it's clear that writing poetry is the best defense against workplace violence:
"Every once in awhile, the number of conversations taking place all around my cube completely breaks my concentration to the point I have to stop working. Typically I am good at ignoring it, but with a three person meeting on one side of me, two people in the cube next to me and the man on the phone in the cube in front of me, the cacophony threshold was too much to tune out. Instead of standing up and screaming, “Shut the fuck up!” I decided to take a break for a couple minutes and rapidly write down the little snatches of conversation that I could make out from the din. It kinda turned out like a poem. I call it, “I Don’t Care If You Want the Machine,” because that’s the last thing I heard before I stopped writing. I highly suggest this exercise to people who occasionally find their concentration equally destroyed... It helped calm me down and was fun. :)"
Here's the resulting poem:
I Don’t Care if You Want the Machine

Look beyond the landing page
It’s different if we just send it out
This thing right here
Maybe they’ll miss it
Loyalty
Reinforced images
I have to show what you can use
Five things
It’s a really good idea
Now they’re on our list
It seems like they want to know how they can help
Religious organizations
There’s more church base than synagogue
That’s too far
We have to develop a contract
It’s a conflict
A very slow cooking cauldron
It’s come a long way
I know this is really frustrating
We know what they want, giving it to them is hard
It’s gonna be grey
She’s got full justification
But I wouldn’t box them in
The raw data will break it down
It’s what I keep on touting about
No “P.S.” on this
Every time you say that
You go carbon dating things
I’m dying

1 comment:

Unknown said...

i like to send all office correspondence as haikus.