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Welcome

Liam Spencer

Lines line long at the three clocks
Smiling and groaning
All in this together.
Machinery ready to be started.

Finally the clocks read right
And off we go. Check vehicle.
Pile in lunches and water.
Last signs of being human.

Grab lose mail sorted by robotic clerks
Who smile despite it all, and head to our cases.
Cusses fly from newbies.
Old timers grunt and laugh.

Eighteen and eight...
Do they mean cusses or casings?
Anyway, it’s solitude;
Each confined to their singular fate.

Conversations by old timers
Relating miseries, distractions, complaints.
Cusses by newbies. Making our way.
Time races as moments drag on.

Supes visit, asking times, handing out asses
It’s their job.
Commitments made, rarely kept.
Numbers tally.
Off to the streets.
Dropping ads and letters,
Packages no one needs.
Consumerism, wanted or not.

Twelves steps, drop.
Keep moving. All timed.
Machine.
Twelves pieces dropped. Automatic.

Make time. Make time.
Undertime. Less time. More time.
It’s all timed. They know where you should be.
Smile at the customer. Nothing in it.

Block after block, robotic.
It’s true. If everything goes right,
The numbers are right on.
On schedule for long day.

Machines are not supposed to sweat
Or drink ice water.
Or dryly weep
For life passing them by.

As numbers mount
Things get delivered
And time passes by
Paychecks building.
Focused on numbers alone,
Making it somehow. The impossible being done.
Zombified, heartless, mindless.
Yet thoughts struggle to the surface.

Body screaming from long days
Triumphs over everything;
Thoughts, mind, heart, soul.
Kill, kill, kill....kill it all inside.

Robot, machine. Passions dying. Rest needed.
“Welcome to machine...”
Dry eyes and drier skin, sunbaked.
A lifeless body will drag itself through.

 
The day done. Another.
Twelve hours, at least, of nothing.
Time to go “home,”
Eat, and take a nap before work.

Such is life.
Such is career.
Such is all we celebrate.
Such is death.

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