(_DOES_). IT. "FEEL" [REAL?]

Savage faces, limp bodies, stinking mouths. Drool the sad sentences of dull death. Hyenas claw and scratch. The blowing balloon of trumpet death. Sick epiphany, shallow ecstasy. The bosses hang themselves. The girls lift their skirts, showing plump memory foam asses. I like it, I like it, I like it! Madness strictly confined to these dull offices. The corporate machine rolls on to the hard rock tune of capitalism. Office fatties choke on their weak hearts. Death of the minutes, murderous money, mediocre survival.

Bodies hanging from the ceiling like condemned puppets, naked in belief. Imagining an idealist dream, I soon resorted to a sort of apathy. But unlike many others, I have protected my ambitions. Soothed them with immortal kisses. In dreams, I see a poor shivering kid at the Queens Road bus stop in Bradford. He is 15 and can’t feel his toes. His chest tightens with asthmatic winter. He stands alone, always alone. Anxious, jaded. He will not escape. I nod at him but he disappears into winter mist. He is a younger self. It has been 6 years since. I have kept my ambitions burning when the sky seemed intent on explosion. The years have ridden me like an angry god, foaming at the mouth. Dragging my feet in a molested menagerie of existence. 

Now I hear the air vents crumbling and the hyenas popping their necks. Hunched over desks, pumped with hot aggression, trembling with anticipation for the moment to assert rough dominance.  Orders not barked but whispered with pocketknife tongues. Orders teased up the back of the spine like a woman’s fingers. It is not a single blow that breaks a man, rather an accumulation of punishment. Sheer volume. 

Finally, the exact point of a man's death is hard to pin down. Intangible. Slowly but surely, a career takes its toll on a man. Too early or too late and then knees creaking like old stairs. Mind drowning in sludge. An almost universal subservience. Where can I find a depraved lunatic with one good eye, soul aflame, spitting crippled madness, licking blood knuckles at death of daydreams?

Without the monthly wage where would we be? Uncivilised ravaging starving mad! Ass, cock and tits swinging naked on cowardly streets with Union Jacks on our backs! Crawling through gutters for a penny. Begging the working crowd for a hot meal. So you see there is a sort of purgatory of existence; burning cities, shotgun minds, souls on fire. There is not much left to do, so I sit up straight at the office and follow orders like a rifle lined up to fire.  

Workplace warzone: shoot me bang in the head and call me Bin Laden. Nails on the end of fingers, on the end of arms, clawing out each other's eyes and hopes for a fucking jaffa cake. Petty arguments and harmless troubles. Necessary drama for the survival of our species. Did Darwin say something about this? There is no motion without the: constant bickering, talking shit, breaking/following of rules, promotions/demotions, stamping on the weak, feigning meek advances for outward displays of strength. I am looking for someone to blame like all of us but I stare at my shoelaces instead. The playing field is uneven and the honest are condemned while hustlers rustle cash in bundled pockets. Fridays round of drinks at the pub, a paycheck and a few holidays a year.

Confined to an office, almost every passing moment can become a lashing teardrop; killing the soul, in the midst of the storming hours. It sounds sensational, it sounds crazy, but there are days like this, so many days like this and nights spent dreading the days. 

Computer screens flashing terror. Worms wriggling in the orifices of the higher ups, damp suits, smiles operated by the tech nerds wanking themselves senseless in basement offices. Why? Why don’t they put an end to this? What is happening? Is this my doing? Lights flash on bald heads, shining reminders of a timely death. The sheer persistence of the elderly workers humiliates me. How can humans endure the compounding illness of society for so many years? I must be missing the deathly lust for a deathly life.

So I throw myself into the computer screen. I am finally part of the machine. Entering a world not unlike our own. I stagger towards the bar and order. No cider on tap. Ok, ‘Orwell on the rocks then.’ A billion eyes analyse my movements; they know when I last ate, fucked, shat. They know all the angles, the ways forward and down. They not only predict my movements, they control them. They want me to order this drink. Go on kid, drink up, relax. Enjoy yourself! Don't worry about it! I imagine 16 inch rifle cocks spraying piss in my face. I am terrified, a glorified victim. Pitiless, piss poor, helpless. They are fucking with me and getting off on it. Who are 'they’? Fuck if I know. Unknown faces. Blank pages. I take a seat and break out in delirious laughter, spitting my drink into pixelated air.

I raise a fist to fight my way out. The bartender grins. My right hand falls off like a breadstick snapped in half. I hear the crunch of bone. Cracking and grinding. But feel nothing. I should have stopped before I began. Futile resistance. A part of me has known this is meaningless for a while. I feel foreign. A loss of control. Alien to this world, alien to myself, to time itself. But this does not surprise me. What is left of me. Using my left hand, my only hand, I raise my glass and down my drink. The bartender disappears with a glitch, the scene twitches, stabbing light blinds my eyes. Pitiless, piss poor, helpless. Deprived of dignity. 

My insides collapse, I disintegrate. Ones and zeros. I think I live in the computer screen now. I have no use for a bank account. Or a paycheck. Or people. No one is here. No voices, no one speaking, no one is listening. I am complex programming made simple. I have forgotten how to ask questions. I have nothing to ask, no desire. I used to have thoughts but they are obsolete. My feet move my body, but it is not my body, not my feet. I am here everyday. I disintegrate, insides collapse. Shut down. End game. The power button is pressed. System restart. Another day at the office.

by Aqeel Pavez

Aqeel Parvez is a poet from Leeds, UK. He loves writing poems. He struggles with author bio's.