O            mouths full of corporate lyrics mumble
               tantrums of fluorescent lamps

O            freedom contingent on compliance
               you lack the liberties you promised

O            work history, my history with work

               I don't go wanting for labor in my dreams any more
               than labor comes looking for me
               it is the bosses who hang it round our necks

O            targeted advertising, relatability rather than relativity
               may you sink into Lethe & be washed clean of all memory
               you might have of my purchase records

O   but God is in the breakroom having memories of death again

               wreckage of a city lies long in the sand like a child's "please"
               when everything is a landmark
               you become numb to the landmarks

               move along, Lord; we've been surviving the "historical moment"
               every day in the breakroom between shifts

O            twelve-spoked wheel tired of spinning at managerial whims
               I was so caught up in the euphoria of having survived I forgot
               the world is not built for the survival of those most in need of its mercy

               say the world, say the fabricated cosmic relevance, say
               a kid who has discovered the word "girl" means something
               more than the football a father tries to foist on her

               relevance? everything is everything shifted one step to the left
               of course it means the same want for wonder

O            wonder of men, a man thanks me for all that I do

               —wind-battered, I have just carried his groceries to his parked car
               so he need not leave his warm vehicle in the Midwestern blizzard—-

               & offers a tip through his window, which is insulting
               only a little less tonight as it will buy my dinner

O            existential rock, upon which is built the altar
               to my ulterior motives behind willingly working in retail
               during a pandemic, you are admittedly beginning to weaken

               who am I but a collection of papers documenting a deceased
               version of myself which in times of emergency & family contact
               faces brief & violent resurrection?

O            gendered structures of retail consumerism, I resist thee
               but the language of subservience fights against me

               I am barbarically sucked back into binarism

O            what if I said everything worth saying aloud
               is a part of poetry & therefore deserves to be written?

               (I tried to make some crucial connection
               between jerking off & antiestablishmentarianism)

               a word scribbled on the back of a receipt, intellectual property
               retaken from the contract that wants to propertize my intellect

O            I see a manager
               I fly into a rage

               I thought working retail again would help me rebuild sympathy
               for managers handling entire stores during crises
               the workers, yes; managers can perish

               the managerially-inclined have been led to believe
               they, too, are a boss
               & so command & demand as such to the extent
               all sympathies were chased from my heart

               Boss is a boss is a boss is a boss

               devoted to the capital promise of a promise, ouroboros of appetite
               goes unsated by the laborers

               the target audience of capitalism
               is capitalism

O            bossman, you know, death is a result of life?
               life is the result of a labor
               your contract can't handle

O            labor according to love is effort towards union
               labor according to unions is effort towards survival

               labor according to survival is worth more than acknowledged
               according to the boss, labor is expected; survival comes later

O            who wrote the laws that bind
               intrinsically the nature of death

               with the machine of capital? currency
               the engine, shift-work the sputtering fuel

O labor,
               a lever with the fulcrum ripped out

               can a life begin with greed?
               certainly, life can end by it

O            how easily we forget the body is a network of engineered desires
               when entire wars are being fought with checkbooks

O            asynchronous lurch we've been left in too long
               I defy to know anything anymore about poetry
               except its one saving grace

O what grace has given me, pass to these pastorals
               denied by long-toothed tyrants

               what past has graced me given here, unbind the ties
               that little arranged by lots tossed godly-handed
                              or
               erase, o leviathan, my dreams of horses running
               my dreams of trees who speak in tongues, my dreams
               of tongues on fire falling from the sky

O            skyless entity fluorescence, I promised a return to you
               a mumbled fragment held against your sick light

               there, within the faded animal-skin parchment stretched
               across crystallized geodes, a remark on ethics still remains
               from what ancient burial site held it all these eons

               resist, says the lamp flickering in the dead wind,
               resist & take hold of each other