A Streetcar Named Undesirable

My steel-wheeled ride to work is human-dense
No ropes, but by our corpses tightly bound
We’re hanging suits, we’re pickets in a fence
Too close to breathe, we whisper not a sound

We rub in ways that make us want to blush
I touch you up there, you nudge me below
We’re intimate within this human crush
In ways reserved most times for folks we know

But willingly we suffer in this box
And pay our fare, the reeking crowd abide
Resign ourselves to shakes and shoves and shocks
To save us from a more expensive ride

For our concern comes to this simple crux:
To park all day will run you forty bucks

Crimson Symbols

The symbol of a bottom line
That failure shows, a bloody sign
Transfusion’s liquid drops in drips
A diabetic’s finger tips

Our vampire CEO has flown
On leathered wings to parts unknown
But not before he drained us dry
Did he at last take wing and fly

A dark domain he did command
His castle built with peasant hand
But when it fell, exposed to light
One-third he banished from his sight

He had a canny bat-like sense
To echolocate severance
And we’re left with a paltry sum
Now that his tenure’s end has come

Black ink is but a memory
For scalpled lines are all we see
These crimson symbols, all that’s left
Of profits we are left bereft

Oh that this ink so sanguineous
Belonged to someone else, not us
But blood upon the bottom line
Though spilled by him, is yours and mine

It’s true this is a sad cliché
“Blood-sucking CEO?” you say
And yet, ere he went on his way
He drained us all – O, B and A
————

Tom Davenport lives in San Francisco and is recovering from 32 years as a human resource consultant. He has written three business books and many serious articles and now does humorous verse as therapy. The results so far are ambiguous. You can see his writings (verse and other) at http://www.worklodes.com.