I saw that you’re an HR Operations Specialist
When I logged in to LinkedIn today
It reminded me that you wanted to be
A reformer, when I knew you as a teenage dreamer
Full of fire and fury at the curriculum that failed them
Alive with the possibility that you could be
The change.
And it’s interesting, the circle I trekked
When I saw that title under your name
It was something like, but not quite, shame
That I didn’t have a label yet, didn’t hobknob
With the purse-strings of this world,
Never fit on the drop-down menu of jobs
No hook to hang my hat on
Because my head thinks it’s too big to fit one.
My life a fairground of fancy dress
Tomorrow’s nomadic, no forwarding address
Last week I was a chef, today a poet
But I need not the greed to receive or bestow it.
And it was today that I heard someone say
You can reject a worldview, figure out your own value
But that won’t counter brain chemistry
It’s a fact that you’ll react with wanting that belonging
Even to a tribe that’s morally bankrupt
But blankets their guilt with banquets
Even as they feed off the edifice, on the edge of this precipice…
I saw your windswept studio photograph
Those eyes that used to love me
Underlined by ‘HR Operations Specialist’
I wanted to be with you in that middle-class dream
Enjoying these end-times like a cat in the cream
So thank you,
Because of that I had to reevaluate the reason I reject
The fragile mantle of success, the ‘why’ of my disrespect
For the path so well-worn,
Why I tangle myself in the trees with my knees torn
Why the challenge of the concrete jungled in race-tracks
That race rats against each other for peanuts
With those on top laughing into their cups
You see you’re still ‘working class’,
Still working for them, making money for machines
That input the invaluable and output greed
Double quick-time quicksand that you stand on
In the hourglass of your own prison,
Even if you’re well compensated for your life
You’re selling your time.
And if I was still with you, I’d be selling mine.
– Joe Blogs