Office Copier
April 18 2009


No one wears a wristwatch anymore.
Except senior management
who grew up with them;
who learned to tell time at-a-glance
dial rotary phones
write letters, with stamps.

I did, too,
but never got promoted.
I occupy this over-heated cubicle.
A fluorescent light
shines directly overhead.
Grey dividers
give a sense of place,
reassuring me.
My standard office chair
tips back precariously;
and I count down the hours,
concentrating
with my eyes closed.
A fine art
first learned in high school.

I shuffle paper.
The screen-saver
keeps me company.

I spend time
with the photocopy machine,
eyelids tight
its fierce immaculate light
passing right through me,
so every molecule feels jumped-up
sparking-off.
And in the purity of illumination
I vanish,
enlightened with blinding insight
with a knowing radiant peace.

Which I promptly forget,
coming down to earth
to the thunk-thunk-thunk of the machine
sorting paper.

After 20 years
there will be a firm handshake
a hearty pat on the back.
No gold watch.
My worthy work forgotten.
All the copies
lost.


A few streams of thought coalesced into this poem.
The first line I read or heard somewhere, and suddenly realized how true it was: that with Blackberries and cells, who needs one? And also how this is very much a generational marker.
Another tributary was an email I had recently received from someone explaining why she hadn't written in awhile: too busy at work. Prior to that, I'd messaged someone else with the old cliche about "no one on their death-bed ever regretting not having gone into the office more".
And finally, there were some ruminations on the "industrial model" of education, on the debasement of genuine curiosity and higher education by the cheap imperative of credentialism. This occurs oh so briefly in the line " ...a fine art / I learned in high school."
So ultimately, this becomes another poem about futility. But also about how imagination and a rich interior life offer us the possibility of rescue. (And what better metaphor than a Xerox machine for the futile life of an under-achiever, spent pushing paper in a cubicle farm ?!!)