From 'The Manager's Poems': People Management -- by File

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I walk back to my office, through the open plan
Feeling the spring of the grey cord carpet
Eyeing metal trim which had once grazed my hand
Lit me up inside for a static split second
Alive for an instant like Shelley’s non-man

Feeding my way through fifty partitions
Banking round the corners on a racing line
Past booths bathed in light from
Flat screen monitors
Giving all living figures a pithy definition

Allowing the door to swing shut, with a click
Throwing myself into the welcoming lap
Of soft loving leather, passively reforming me
My fingers reach instinctively the cradle of paper clips
Where they swim in cool steel, dive, surface and slip

Addressing the smooth brushed birch of my desk
Adjusting the dynamic tension of my tie
Noticing the blinking green light of my secretary
On the nameless black telephone, a nursing breast,
Chrome pads inviting faded fingerprints to rest

So I file, upright cardboard folders, righteous crisp paper tiles
Into orderly rows in congregated aisles
Under a Latin calendar from our pious accountants
Ever on their knees, singing psalms to their insignia
An iconic blue abacus of immaculate piles

And I type, on a cracked mud keyboard, clauses coming to life
As in a database field my dried flowers just might
Wind in my green fingers, I dance with my children
Wind in their hair from the cool zephyr air-con
Shadow hide and seek in the harsh office light

Wall-hung organizational chart
Is as close as I'll get before heading home,
Now location of dependents, out to
My Jaguar, staff jalopies in the tarmac car park
Silence. People management is an art..

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