My Life is a Scratched CD (OR Blue Collar Lament- The Little Napper Remix)
Lines taken from poems by JM Romig (Ursa Somniculosa/CD Skipping Down Route 11) and Ryan Kinney (Blue Collar Lament)
It's long drive on this highway
The window creeks
- its jagged way down
I breathe in the new air for the first time in months
the CD starts skip-skip words
Hopping over - lines
Reminding me
Of finite fuel
repeat-
finite time
With work looming just hours away
repeat-
Death, just decades away
I spend most of my week
in the back of the factory
where I sell my free time
on repeat
in a semi-conscience trance
watching multi-million dollar machines work
repeat
in the back of the factory
where I sell my free time
is a constellation of dirt, chipped paint
and cobwebs
forming the shape
of a bear
lounging in a hammock
skip
They are more alive than I am.
Monday at 3 PM I click off my brain,
switch on automatic,
repeat
automatic
skip
- the countdown:-T-minus 40 hours.
Each minute that ticks by
in the dull monotony slowly steals my sanity,
bit by bit
Each minute closer to Friday
slower and slower,
until on Friday they seem to tick
backwards--
skip
I have coworkers
who insist that it's a monkey,
trapped in a net
Each day blurs into the other
making them indistinguishable.
Repeat-
My finite time
Monday,
the entirety of the previous week
on repeat-
T-minus 40 hours.
skip
they are wrong.
It's clearly a bear
In the back of the factory
where I sell my free time
repeat-
Death - just decades away.
The dictator they put in charge of the asylum
barks out commands on cue,
just to remind everyone that they own you.
skip
The desperation for dollars
are the shackles that keep me here.
I often welcome sleepwalking:
I think of Emerson
On repeat-
Skip-
I think I feel like his transparent eyeball
repeat-
His eyeball-
I begin to understand
I begin to feel like I'm one with everything
skip-
everyone is love
repeat
love
every-Everyone is me
and you
skip-skip
-the impending coma
In the few instances the machines malfunction
I curse being awakened.
At least as a zombie, I don't feel
my mind rotting
repeat
the rotting constellation of dirt,
chipped paint and cobwebs:
Ursa Somniculosa
No matter where I am on the floor,
I can see him hanging there in his hammock
on the weekends I love life.
I shed the identity the uniform has forced upon me
and my true self emerges--
repeat
my finite fuel
In the back of the factory
where I sell my free time
repeat
the desperation for dollars
I truly only live two days a week
repeat
my finite time
I'm dying the other five
skip-skip
I think of Ursa Somniculosa -
In the back of the factory
where I sell my free time
enjoying his perpetual vacation
maybe sipping on a nice tall beer
soaking up the sun -
NOT being a trapped monkey
like all of us down here
on repeat