i joined the national workforce at the age of fifteen/and so have paid into social security for more than fifty years

i have worked almost a year for the u s postal service, america’s largest employer

i worked an aggregate nine years for three different healthcare systems, wrangling spreadsheets

i have worked at the family business my grandmother’s husband started/and later for my stepbrother/and later yet for my stepfather

i have been a warehouseman and a substitute teacher and a graphics designer and a data processor and a front desk night clerk and an office manager and a restaurant host/cashier and an administrative vice president

lately I’ve been a prep cook mostly slicing tomatoes and onions and portioning refried beans

consequently my dreams sometimes take hold/in a workplace setting/and last night was one such

in the dream i had come back to work after a leave of absence/and was told to look around

and my old and presumably reinstated office space/was engulfed in stuffed file folders/and the desktop computer i had used was gone

and a strange lady nearby saw my aghast expression/and said “don’t worry, this is temporary”

then a bigshot-looking blustery guy commanded me to find him a round office ASAP

and I looked in vain upstairs and down

then a guy dressed for golf with a bronzed suntan peeked around a doorway and seeing me asked me how my GOLF GAME was and suggested that we blow this pop stand and go to meet the tee time he’d arranged so he could check out my GOLF GAME

and i knew suddenly that a) this guy was powerful b) if i had a good GOLF GAME i could write my own ticket c) the firm was flying false colors as far as company mission went d) my GOLF GAME would be as good as my dream made it–hey, e) this was a dream.

i shuffled out of bed and to the bathroom/to take care of an old man’s business/and saw i had a good hour before the alarm

so I tried to pick up on the dream where it left off/but of course that rarely happens

and I was never able to clean house/with that corrupt company, alas