By Thomas Caterer

The man in the suit kisses his wife and kids goodbye in the morning
The sludge factory beckons him and the other humanoids in suits
Their lids are unbearably heavy, and life is so heavy yet empty
A strange contradiction

The lady from accounting and the bloke from HR
flirt between puffs on a fag break with dead eyes and forced smiles
They have an affair out of a mutual fear of death
only at the office out of respect for the kids
When the bloke’s piss starts to burn he wonders if there’s others…

The numbers droid wearing chinos and a polo for dress down Friday
inputs the details on the form, declining the benefit to the mentally ill
lady from the South-West, a single mother and paranoid, not working
Her upcoming suicide will be buried in the ever revolving news cycle;
the weary creaking of clogs reporting lucrative arms deals, polluted rainforests,
a cure for a form of blindness only accessible to the rich

The man in the suit wonders the point of it all
He doesn’t love the strangers back home
The commute is so exhausting, every meal so tasteless
yet assuredly containing this, and lacking that, so it must be good
Trips to the gym and smoothie bar with the new intern
She’s 21 and wants to see the world, ‘god, I just want to die’ thinks the man

If he woke up, he and all the others, perhaps the heavy would become light
He’d tell his boss where he can stick his job, he’d donate his suit to the Oxfam on the corner
He’d give his coat to the homeless fella outside Greggs, and when he went in for a sausage roll, he’d buy him one too
He’d actually hold his wife and kids, feel a warming sensation inside his veins where his soul’s been sleeping, he’d run outside screaming ‘fuck the sludge, fuck the quarterly report!’