3D

by Ian Mullins

They carve two days of fat
from the seven-day sirloin
and say here, they’re yours,
cook them how you like: but why
do they consume the other five?
Are they children I send off
to school so I can keep
the others alive? Monday’s child

is no less beautiful that Sunday’s;
but there she troops, down into
the work-face. I surrender her sisters
to teach them the life-lesson that crowns,
like bullets, are randomly aimed
at random heads, but who demands
I teach them such lessons?

No one but the puppet master
at the heart of the world, telling us
the strings are only there to keep us
tall and straight, so we can look on
with pride as he separates our children
into dreamers, drudges or dregs.

Jacob's Ladder

by Ian Mullins

‘Own it,’ he says;
but if I own the job
the job owns me, and I’ve
too much to lose
to allow that to happen.

Owned men are too much
in love with their chains to feel
the stallion’s weight on their
donkey backs. They wear
their chains the same way
they wear their beer bellies;
fashioned so proudly they can’t
stand up without them.

And behind them a long chain
of owned men, every link
leading back to the man
who owns the joint,
lashing the long whip
and looking fearfully at
the little man who pulls the chain
locking him to his chair,
his boardroom, his life.

Jacob Marley, CEO;
patiently forging new links.