Office Blues: Sad Verses about Working Life

During the author's youth, he found it very difficult to adapt to work in a hierarchy, and hold down an office job, even though he was sent to work and live in Manhattan. To cope with a difficult situation, and console himself over the loss of freedom after the carefree college years, he wrote plaintive poems in a variety of styles. They may serve as a warning to others that working in an organisation may well undercut the search for happiness.

Here is a sample:


A Bad Day

My hair is wet, my feet are cold
I feel some eighty-five years old
And looking that, not twenty-three:
A wretch in hopeless misery.

It’s my own fault, for selling me
To this soul-deadening Ministry
For entering the steel-barred wheel

A birth-right for a linseed meal
Is not a bargain worse than mine:
I sold my highest good,
My time.  

These poems were written almost 30 years ago, but their subject -an individual suffering because the sale of his freedom for a small salary seems such an unsatisfactory situation - is timeless.


The book also contains a bonus excerpt for the author's other poetry collection, Weird and Bombastic Rhymes. Most of those are comical, as the office job did not kill off all his joy in absurdity and word play.

Here is a sample:

The Flea

When I was in prison, in prison
My only company
Was a tiny black, a tiny black
A tiny little flea.

I called him Abe (after Lincoln)
Because he never lied,
He never cheated either
Until the day he died.

The days were long, so long, oh,
The flea did not get bored
He would jump to distract me
Up in the air he soared

Abe could have left but he stayed there,
Oh, very faithfully,
And for a daily drop of blood
He’d always stick to me.

But alas! I cruelly left him
One fine October day
When the guards were getting careless
I made my getaway.

I wonder what became of Abe
Maybe he’s awful blue
Alone in that prison, that prison,
The finest flea I knew.