We have a strict policy at Goldberg and Fry
With rules stretching from A to Y
[Z was an amendment of various addendums]
Rule 1: was the first of many cages
To stretch and yawn its way across the pages
Like a thousand silicone polymers wrapped together; how nutty
We’ll call it silly putty.
It said this:
A worker [robot] cannot injure their boss’s assessment
Or allow them to be thrown into a cold and barren investment
A worker [robot] must obey all orders
Except when it interfered with rolling quarters
A worker [robot] must protect himself
Unless it plundered the executive almighties wealth
the way the corridors look,
The grey somber brook
Of papery colorless abandon and the clack clack clacking I hear at my nest
[I stretch my legs while filing away my dreams and the rest]
Oh! look what I’ve become
My legs are narrow like hope
And my trousers pout on my belt-rope
Also,
My hands shake.
Rule 2: existed as a provisionary measure
To keep man from taking in any pleasure
To hold him still and flick away the fingernails
And cut down the mariners tidy alabaster sails
It said this:
A penny for a penny
Leaves the whole world with many
Rob, steal, and pillage their pockets for two
[So that I can be of the rich and the few]
If I ruled the world:
I would smoke fifty cigarettes in a universities garden
[I would never say please, or thank you or pardon]
I would grow my hair lion’s long
Puffing rote from a glass stained bong
I would test the merit of my stubble
And build a house of war-stained rubble
I would walk across the road without seeing
Challenging the God-Almighty being
And fly away like Icarus
If he never flew into a sun
I would wag my tongue at the parlor girls
And kiss red-heads wearing their mother’s pearls
[They shake their hips like battleships]
I have watched my skin grow damp
Like a sewer cover’s stamp
I have in the lake watched my face grow gaunt
And stood by the dreamers who got what they want
[Am I now a man who could tilt the tides?]
I used to be—could stroll along the street sides
Do I look like the man I hate--
That marches up and down first-rate?
And wears the color black to work--
So that one day I could shoulder Teddy’s stork?
Am I pushing up daisies by my family crest--?
Disturbing the dead with my rapidly-beating chest?
I should have taught gym
Or worked outside of a factories prim
[I can see the rolled up shirts of youth]
Rule 3: It connects me to my fate like telephone cables
And reaps my blood on the operating tables
It stands head and shoulders above the rest
As my boss says he likes it best
It goes a little something like this:
You can clock out anytime you like
But you can’t ever leave.
