poem a day 2015: 10

Hiding in the Library

I am currently imagining
that my office is not a 3 minute walk away
but instead in another country
where human animals do not sense the fact of Friday
but scuttle hither and yon with their heads
buried in their shoulders
and their eyes fixed on the abused carpet
where a 100 years of such traffic
looks like a trail of bloody tears.

Instead of joining that Protestant parade
(all the more pathetic ironic for the Catholic walls
that contain it)
I am sitting in the library cafe with a latte
nursing what feels like the start of rebellion
against the tyranny of busywork, of paper
pushing and paper grading, of make-meetings and
theoretical readings, of emails and assignments and
break room cabals over translucent coffee,

I am tapping this poem out on my iPad
like a neo-bohemian,
smacking down autocorrect
and the evil first line capital letter default
with impunity, with decision, with a kind of
flamboyant disregard for authority,
word by word leaving that office
further behind in that dusty country
where PhDed peasants toil in the academic fields
plucking intellectual cotton from the gnarled vines
til their fingers weep metaphorical blood.