! ! Those Twenty-First Century Bluues... Poem by Michael Shepherd

So it’s morning start time at the office.
Or should be.
Red-eyed, those tell-tale diagonal ridges
from eyes across the cheeks..
we roll in late, proud, but exhausted..
our wrists flashing with
bling allied to timekeeping…
but even we ourselves don’t care;
and sore did you say sore…

By now, judging from my emails,
just about every wage-earner in the East and West
sports a fake Bulgari, Patek Philippe, Gucci,
weighing down their wrist; and
who believes or cares when we say, we keep
the real one at home?

Ah yes, at home -
where our nights are longer
and more extended and
you know just what I mean..

and we’d love to go freelance but
where but the office
could we discreetly boast, show off
our new swinging thingies,
or our pert bouncers, or simply flash our wrist,
to all those who are now equipped with just the same
by consumerism’s joyless games
and internet’s gross joyless claims,
and money now, only confers
the same as his; the same as hers.