The silk is knotted tight around the carotid
A crimson stripe proving I’m not yet rotted
I buff the oxblood leather till the surface screams
A polished coffin for the father’s busted dreams
I walk among the concrete where the pigeons shit
A candidate for cages with the proper wit
The skyscraper is a needle in a vein of gray
Injecting dividends into the dying day
Up the elevator toward the thirty-fourth floor
Knocking on the walnut of the master’s door
I’m selling every second for a plastic card
The hope of the hire is a heavy yard
A beggar in a blazer with a manic grin
Let the corporate liturgy begin
The receptionist is glass and polished chrome
She knows I’m just a tenant with no spiritual home
I wait upon the sofa like a sacrificial calf
Watching the executives share a hollow laugh
The air is filtered through a dead man’s lung
I taste the silver on my nervous tongue
The resume is fiction bound in cheap blue ink
A bridge across the sewer where the failures sink
I’ll tell them metrics and the record of growth
While swearing on the Bible of the corporate oath
Meanwhile the hunger is a dog beneath the skin
And every answer that I give is paper-thin
The fluorescent tubes are humming overhead
A choir of the willing and the walking dead
The coffee is a sacrament I cannot taste
It washes down the panic and the bitter waste
They say “We’ll get back to you”—a velvet knife
A lullaby that slowly amputates your life
The gilded noose is tighter
I’ll suck the corporate gristle if the price is right
And pray for the endurance of a longer night
Now the hope is a burning
Sharp light
Until the contract signs away my fucking sight