He packed a sack lunch and headed off to a toxic hell
With thoughts of ballet slippers and building blocks buried in the back of his mind.
He spent 3,240 minutes of his existence playing slave to a silver machine
In a dusty nowhere with a man named (fill-in-the-blank) on his right
And a single mother of four empty stomachs on his left.
He collected $360 on Tuesdays
All of which was swallowed whole by a potbellied creature called Debt
Aside from the gristle:
Pension in a handful of lint-covered pennies.
20 odd years at a power plant
Poured quietly down the drain each morning at 6 AM
Only to settle alongside pathetic clumps of Colgate
and putrid bits of after-shave.
He received a bonus in the form of arthritis at age 42
And was left heading home empty hearted
With thoughts of ballet slippers and building blocks buried in the back of his mind.
Society said he lived a blue collared life
but he never saw a color other than Corporate Green.
