Poem inspired by the 25 floor elevator ride

"The Corporate Pastures of Our Green and Pleasant Land"

They stood in solemn silence, four abreast,
With upturned faces reflected in chrome
Elevator doors, and laboured breathing
Heavy through gaping mouths. Still no one spoke,
But deeply breathed in grime and dust and smog,
Patient, waiting for the pond'rous machine
To reach the nadir of its heavenly
Descent, a growling beast on the slow track
Going down...down...down… (Stop. Another man,
Another automaton, clambers on
To stare glassy-eyed at the mirror doors).
Still no one speaks! The silence is not bleak,
Nor dull, nor rev'rent, nor even sullen.
The passengers do not resent the beast
Or love it, as disciples with lower’d gaze,
But merely ride in its enflamed gullet
Without a second thought, heedless and bored--
Poised expectant to stream out like a flood
Bursting over the waking world's dry dam
In a sort of sweaty wakeful sleep.
To dream, through android days, of electric sheep.