Blood-Drunk On Balance Sheets

I am blood-drunk on balance sheets
dizzy on the zeroes
stacking up like skulls

If greed has a face
it is not a cartoon villain in a cape
it is me in a suit
with a calm tone
in a boardroom seat

I watch numbers climb
like mercury in a glass tube
red bars screaming higher
every quarter

Profit margins widening
like a grin full of sharpened teeth
while factories cough out smoke
and human slaughter

You tell me about overtime
about fingers lost in machines
about backs broke under pallets
loaded too heavy to haul

I nod
raise your targets
tell you you are doing great
tell you this is the cost
of standing tall

Workers line up outside in the dark
eyes hollow
throats raw
from the air they breathe
inside my steel walls

They hold cardboard signs
and chant words about justice
punched lungs driving their calls

I watch from a tinted window
with a drink in my hand
amusement curling behind my molars
like a hidden blade

Every shout out there
is just proof I am getting paid

Every cut to safety
every shaved-off cent
feels like another bite of meat
I was sent
I keep chewing
through consent

You bring me reports of injuries
photos blurred
IDs redacted
but the stains come through

Hands caught
lungs scarred
legs crushed under loads
that would not have fallen
if I had funded one more brace
one more guard

I skim the summary
mark it “reviewed”
then flag the cost of fixing it
as “excess spend we can trim”

Go home and sleep on a mattress
paid for by the corners
I refused to cut

I tell myself
I did not swing the hammer
or push the pallet
or design the line

I just wrote the figures
that made it profitable
wrote the script for the grind

But when I read “fatality” in a memo
and feel curiosity before grief
I know greed did not just rent my mind
it stole the fucking switch

One day some jury will hold those reports
in their hands
and ask how I slept
while those figures bled off the page

They will not understand
how money can make you blind
to drink from that gauge