Life in the Corporate World

by Behzad Sadeghi
Boston, Masssachusetts, USA

Behind the dark, tinted corporate windows,
that have been tightly sealed and insulated
     to keep in sound and heat;
          body heat that is,
seasons are changing.

Snow flakes
dancing harmoniously, as they slide down the window pane,
are a testimony to the earth's rotation.
And as the snow flakes melt away on their traveling path
     so with them melts away
          my every conscious moment,
but my moments have the luxury
     of melting away in the corporate world.

In the corporate world
life is simulated using scheduling charts
calculators, calendars and modeling schemes,
and it is accentuated by morning conversations
and coffee breaths.

In the corporate world
the only living pulse
beats within the veins of the office memos
     that circulate freely
     and abundantly
     from one desk to another.
Their blood-pressure is measured
by my manager,
as he often does in his spare time,
     using advanced computer techniques.

A fellow corporate colleague
strides by my office,
as he dodges the attack of the flying memos.
He greets me with a fake smile,
and annoyed
by the interruption of my thoughts
I smile back;
a fake smile, of course.

Through the half-lit hallways
I see the office memos
in the shape of paper-planes
colliding with the sealed tinted glass windows
seeming to want to leave these perimeters
as if wishing for the cold real world
outside the temperature-controlled corporate world.