Hole In The Hedgerow

I feel like a potato in a potato sack.

Covered in coarse, rough, Burlap.

Burlap,

The ugliest material in the world.

I wake up at eight.

Get there by nine,

The rest is an endless sea of burlap.

Why put burlap on the walls?

What could have been so wrong with the walls?

The walls couldn’t have been uglier.

I don’t think anything could ever be

That brownness.

I’ve never seen any brown like it.

How could a brown look so un-earthy.

It’s alien brown

It’s not green,

It’s not white,

It’s not even brown,

It is burlap.

I have a plant.

It’s a cactus.

I forget to water it until it dies.

I replace it with a new one when it does.

I have some pictures,

Stuck to the walls in-between the burlap.

One is of a beach.

I’ve never actually been.

The color of the ocean drained by fluorescent lights.

I have a computer too,

Usually a screen full of cells,

Like a room full of cubicles.

It stops working,

And I unplug it,

And plug it in again,

And it starts working,

I’m a problem solver just like my resume says I am.

I get mail on it sometimes with jokes.

I never laugh at the jokes,

I always say I did later on.

I’m like a rat in a lab experiment.

I’m in a maze made from tiny burlap covered walls.

But there’s no cheese,

Just an endless sea of tiny

Burlap cubicles.

But I’m not a rat,

I have two legs,

I can stand up,

And if I stand up,

I can see over the edge of the tiny walls.

I hardly ever stand up.

There’s nothing to see up there but an endless sea

Of burlap cubicles.

I stand up now,

Look out across the checkered burlap squares.

An army of hunched over data enterers staring at fluorescent flickering screens.

All I hear is the sound of clicking keys,

And a distant weird buzzing that never seems to stop,

And yet never seems to exist at all.

I need a drink.

I feel dried out like my cactus.

I walk over to the water cooler.

I’m like a hamster drinking from his giant sippy bottle.