The Guillotine

The best way to cope with the dead bodies

was to step over them and hold your breath

so the stink of their rotting flesh

didn’t make you pass out,

besides the janitor would drag them out to the dumpster,

then all you had to contend with

were the severed heads that might have

rolled under some desk.

 

Those brains spilled on the floor

really made such a mess,

hard to clean them up with a vacuum,

can always leave them for the next crew,

not like they will get in the way

if you used them for footstools.

 

There was a time when those suggestions

might have made my stomach curdled,

left me outraged over the shear cruelty

such utter calloused comments,

when I still had a heart and companies were run by human beings,

but now the help were trolls meant to be abused

for the sake of the corporate meat grinder.

 

Always hanging over the head was the guillotine

a subtle hint of intimidation

over how any offense could summon execution

then end up decapitated and unemployed

just because someone was in a bad mood.

 

Death cling to everyone as disease,

tried to feel pain over the ritual slaughter

each cattle call in layoffs that left friends gutted and slain.

 

But the profit lords had gone insane

and tears were for the weak,

made worse when you personally have to pull the lever

to watch a screaming condemned die from being terminated.

 

Asbestos wrapped around the heart and conscience,

slowly walking towards the bathroom to bleed the shame

where throwing up purges

any sense of being other than a soulless slug in servitude.