1:25 PM - Jan. 19, 2005
la brea
it's one-twenty-six in the afternoon and my shoulders ache, my chest a brown rusty bottle cap stuck on an old Coke bottle. and from this ninth floor window, a brown pigeon, new to this eighty degrees in january, and the pecking at flies on the clean gray ledge. i want to stretch out like creeping charlie on my office bookcase, the one i don't ever remember to water but still it grows and yearns for more sun. and the faces that pass my door like a funeral, they know that a layoff is coming, or might come, that even its possibility is a rope around their throats and chocolate is a drug best afforded now if only to pass the time. and there's a new big boss coming, and all believe in acorns, we will ship their jobs overseas, and i keep saying no, we can fight this by acquiring new skills and make ourselves new but not many want to grow a new eye, or sprout dark feathers or weld four toes into a hoof. they want the clouds to freeze and the rocks to melt and flood the halls with blue Drano, strike a match, and light the world anew. i close my blinds and my office is dark and we all can turn to stone.
