The cardboard edges bite like teeth into my sweaty palms
A thirty-pound delivery of institutional psalms
I’m hauling the bureaucracy in a heavy double stack
While the weight of the prevention is snapping out my back
The ink is full of warnings and the paper is a wall
Between the man who’s walking and the man about to fall
I’ve got the rules of posture and the codes of the floor
While I’m fumbling for the handle of the corrugated door
My boot catches the edge of a stray and rusted nail
A tragic little friction that makes the logic fail
The manuals are flying like white birds in the street
While the pavement is rising up to break my bloody feet
I’m bleeding on the chapters of the way to stay alive
Watching every safety law begin to take a dive
The irony is heavy and the concrete is so hard
Falling on the index of the OSHA-rated guard
I’m lying in the driveway with a twisted purple knee
Reading page forty-two about the dangers that I see
The blood is soaking through the handbook like an editorial bleed
While the subtitle is mocking every stitch that I will need
The forklift in the background gives a melancholy sigh
As I count the violations that are written in the sky
I swear the concrete’s laughing at my regulatory pain
While the safety manual floats like a boat without a brain
I’m buried by the literature of the shape that I’m in
The irony is screaming like a clipboard in the dark
Leaving every regulation with a red and wet mark
The ambulance is rolling with its rhythmic blue glare
While the smell of the disinfectant fills the humid air
I’ll be in the emergency room for the rest of the day
Thinking of the paragraphs that I failed to obey
I’m a monument to gravity and the failure of the print
A man who found the hard way that the universe won’t hint
The box is wide open and the pages are all wet
With the sweat of the struggle and the blood of the debt
I’ll sign the claim in triplicate with a hand that’s gone to stone
While the weight of the irony is gnawing on the bone
The pavement has the final word the asphalt doesn’t lie
Regardless of the many ways we plan to never die